HAVING wandered around the countryside as a gamekeeper for most of my life, observing Nature has always enthralled me. I have been fortunate to witness many spectacular wildlife encounters—not least a peregrine falcon striking a red grouse in an explosion of feathers—but, often, it is the sheer beauty of something common and humble that gives me the greatest joy. Cobwebs are that very thing, the work of the industrious spider, whether it be hung on a frosty autumn morning, glinting between the dried stalks of hogweed, or covering in a continuous sheet of shiny gossamer a heather-clad hill or low-ground stubble.
In Britain, we have 37 spider families, making up about 650 types of the eight-legged arachnids. Not all of them weave webs to catch prey, however—only about half do; others, such as the wolf spider, which chases down its victims, bites them and sucks them dry, spin silk to make a nursery for their young. Spiders, incidentally, are master hunters, as well as weavers: jumping spiders leap and crab spiders ambush while lurking in the undergrowth.
