Nurseryweb Spider

Nurseryweb Spider (Pisaura mirabilis)

When it comes to spiders, I'm a bit of a weenie; I've been a serious spiderphobe for as long as I can remember. I'm trying hard to conquer my fears, though, and one of the things we did recently to help was purchase a copy of Britain's Spiders. Our thought was that if I learned a bit more about them, maybe I'd come to appreciate them, and wouldn't have to whistle the Spiderman theme song (Mike's cue to come and rescue an 8-legged intruder) quite so often. Today, while I was mooching around the garden, I spotted this one doing a bit of sunbathing on a leaf low along one of our hedges. A quick look in the book turned up its ID. It's a Nurseryweb Spider (Pisaura mirabilis), the only member of its genus in Britain. (There are others elsewhere in the Palearctic.) The sexes are similar in appearance and size, so I'm not sure if this is a male or a female. Apparently, this species is extremely variable in colour and pattern, but always shows that wavy-edged stripe down the middle of its back. The book specifically mentions it sunbathing with its first and second sets of legs outstretched and held together — how's that for an ID feature?!

The spider gets its name from its parenting style. The female carries her egg-sac full of unhatched spiderlings around under her body. Once they've hatched, she deposits them in a tent-like web she's made in low vegetation, and guards the outside for several days, until they're ready to be on their own. Nurseryweb Spiders are common and widespread across much of England and Wales in a variety of habitats. Interestingly, they're the only spider species in Britain where the male presents the female with a wrapped "present" (aka a meal) before mating — presumably as a distraction to avoid being eaten himself!

The Worm Turns

Our first adult earthworm of the year showed up Sunday afternoon, writhing along on the concrete patio just outside the office door. Clearly, that wasn't a good place for it to be — since the nearest earth was a crack full of ants between the nearby paving stones — so I moved it out into the garden where it could dig its way back into the soil. It appears this is a Lob Worm (Lumbricus terrestris), one of Britain's common grassland earthworms. Who knew there are 26 species of earthworm in Britain?! I sure didn't before I started trying to identify this one. The dark color on the first part of the worm, between the head and the "saddle" (that slightly wider, pinkish patch about 1/3 of the way down its body) combined with its length (7+ inches) and thickness (as thick as a pencil) help to identify it.

Earthworms are interesting creatures. They spend most of their life underground, typically coming to the surface only at night to mate or migrate. They're all hermaphrodites, with both male and female sex organs. They "breathe" through their skin, have a straight-through, tubular digestive tract, and "see" light through photosensitive cells on their backs. Most garden varieties live a year or two, though some species are known to live as long as eight years. They play a huge role in improving the soil, converting vast amounts of decomposing organic material into soil. Estimates of the number of earthworms in soil are truly staggering: recent research suggests that even poor soil may support 250,000 worms per acre, while rich farmland may support up to 1,750,000 per acre! Somehow, I don't think we have quite that many here.

Followup One and Two

I wanted to share a great picture Mike got of a male Hairy-footed Flower Bee after he rescued it from the "summer house" at the bottom of our garden. The photo certainly makes clear how this bee got its name! Bees collect pollen on the hairs that cover their back legs, so I'm not really sure of the function of the long hairs on the middle legs of this species. Perhaps females think it's incredibly sexy? That seems to drive the development of a lot of the bizarre appendages and embellishments found in various animal species. Regardless, I haven't been able to find anything on the internet (or in any of our books) so far that explains it.

The Coltsfoot I photographed earlier this spring has finally gone to seed, and is currently shedding potential future plants all over the place. Today's wind is certainly helping with their dispersal! The long pappus (the fuzzy white hairs that extend from the brown seed) helps them sail high and far — if the seed-eating birds don't get them first.

Dock Bug

Dock Bug (Coreus marginatus)

I spotted a new insect for the garden this afternoon, while hanging out with my binoculars hoping for some passing migrant to drift by. This is a Dock Bug (Coreus marginatus), one of the UK's many shield bugs. Though similar in appearance to a handful of other species, it can be distinguished by its "large size" (just over half an inch, or 15 mm, which is big for a shield bug) and by the two tiny horns between its antennae. Those horns are tough to see in the picture above, but if you click to enlarge it and squint, you just might manage. The broad, curved abdomen, which is wider than the pronotum (the first thoracic segment, just behind the head), is also distinctive. As you might infer from their name, Dock Bugs feed primarily on the fruits and seeds of dock plants and their relatives — and there are plenty of those growing wild in the surrounding countryside. According to Collins Complete British Insects, this species also feeds on rosebuds and soft fruit, which is likely to make it unpopular with our neighbors. The book also says that Dock Bugs congregate in numbers in the spring and fall, just before and after hibernating. I found only a single insect, so I guess it's been out of its hibernaculum for a while.

All a-buzz in the trees

While we are keen to have a garden that benefits wildlife, this does not automatically mean that all of the plants in it need to be natives. Of course we encourage natives, but the established garden already has a large number of non-native, woody plants in it, so we'll be working out what works for wildlife and what might have to be replaced with something better.

Right now, the Japanese Cherry that forms a centre-piece to the lawn area is a spectacular sight. Our plant is the cultivar 'Shirotae', a variety that forms a distinctive, broadly spreading parasol of branches and bears semi-double, white flowers. Double-flowered forms often have all of the stamens converted to petals and thus have a greatly reduced benefit to wildlife. However, semi-doubles typically just have double the usual number of petals, together with all the necessary bits in the middle - so they produce pollen and nectar in the usual way. Double-flowered forms might look nice, but they are of little or no use to pollinator insects.

So our cherry has the double benefit of bee-attractant, together with larger flowers that look spectacular. Right now, the bees are having a great time and I reckon at least eight different species have been visiting the flowers today!

The Place is Buzzing

Female Hairy-footed Flower Bee (Anthophora plumipes)

For the past week or so, the pollinators have really been buzzing around the garden. We haven't managed to sort most of them out yet (we need our friends Adam or Katie, both budding bee experts, to make a visit — and soon) but one we have identified is the Hairy-footed Flower Bee (Anthophora plumipes). The still photo shows a female visiting some naturalised Grape Hyacinth, while the video shows a male visiting some of the Red Dead-Nettle currently blooming all over the yard. According to our copy of Bees of Norfolk (yes, we're nerds), there are no records of this bee for the 10km square that we live within. We can certainly provide evidence that they're here; we've had dozens in the garden for several weeks now!

Females are black, with those distinctive orange pollen-collecting hairs on their back legs. Ours also show some orange on the face too, which isn't illustrated in the books we have. Males are gingery overall, with a large patch of yellow on their faces. They also show many long hairs on their legs (tough to see in the video). Both sexes also have super-long tongues, which is another key ID feature. We found a dead female on our doorstep a few days ago, and her tongue was nearly as long as her legs!

 Again according to the books, this is a common and widespread species in our part of the world, found in a variety of habitats — including gardens — from March to June. The list of flowers they're known to visit include many of the early spring "weeds" in our garden, and the flowers that attracted these two are included in the list. Apparently, these bees nest in big groups (i.e. sometimes in the thousands) in the walls of buildings and on cliffs. Let's hope they don't pick one of our walls for this year's romancing!

Help for Swallows

Last year - our first summer at the house and so too for the neighbours - we had a pair of Barn Swallows hanging around for a number of days and looking as though they recognised the place. Neither we nor the neighbours could know if they had nested here in previous years, but I suspect that they had. Eventually they moved away and hopefully found somewhere to nest, but this year, we're trying to get ahead of the game by installing a starter home for them.

Barn Swallows make open-cup nests and prefer to build under an overhang so that they get at least some protection from the worst of the weather. So a quick purchase from the One Stop Nature Shop at Burnham Deepdale was in order and now I've just installed this purpose-built swallow nestbox under the back eaves. Barn Swallows should be back in the area within the next 10 days or so - so it's finger crossed time!