A private moment in the life of a Garden Spider.

We see spider activity around us daily, spiders hunting, spider courtship and the numerous egg sacs but what we don't see is that moment the female spider releases her eggs prior to her encasing them in silk. Back in July I managed to photographically document the tiny pirate spider, Ero furcata producing eggs and the photos were featured in the Spring edition of the British Arachnological Society's Newsletter. I was over the moon to observe this spider behaviour and never in my wildest dreams believed I would capture it again. How wrong was I! So it was, on the 20th November 2016 I had the privileged to view and record this special and quite unseen moment in a spiders life.... AGAIN! I'd been observing the female for a few weeks previous as she was located on a potted shrub in the garden. When I first found her, she was at rest with no web in sight and by the size of her, I was fairly certain she was gravid. I set up a polythene shield around the shrub to keep the birds away from her and basically kept my fingers crossed that she didn't wait until the early hours to deposit her eggs and I got lucky. After creating a substantial silk matt to lay her eggs, which lasted nearly 3 hours, she rested for a while before depositing the eggs. The actual process of depositing the eggs was fairly fast, taking 25 mins max. Watching her physically deflate was an absolute marvel. Encasing the eggs in silk took a lot longer, starting at 10:30pm and finishing at 5:49am the next morning. Over seven hours meticulously extruding the silk covering must of been exhausting. Seven days later on 28th November 2016 I found her deceased still hanging onto the egg sac. I've kept the polythene in place around the shrub and was hopeful that the coming Spring, the spiderlings would emerge and mother Araneus diadematus's hard work wasn't in vain. It was to be just over four months later that on the 29th march 2017 I came home from work early at around 2:30pm and noticed a slight separation from the main egg sac. I had a closer look under a hand lens and lo and behold, 3 small spiderlings slowly emerging. I really couldn't describe my excitement at that moment, pretty overwhelming to say the least. Over the next few days several more spiderlings started to emerge but progress was slow. It was around 11 days later that I noticed the distinctive dorsal triangles were starting to appear. On the 15th April behaviour had become frenetic to say the least as the spiderlings scramble this way and that, making their very own silk roads. The spiderlings were also starting to congregate. This communal behaviour possibly offers protection against predators and there is no better sensory device then these Araneus diadematus balls. Touch one with your finger and the explosion is instantaneous with little spiderlings shooting off in all directions. Now I need to back track a month. In February I noticed that half the egg sac had started to darken and I believe that for whatever reason the eggs had gone bad and were decomposing. I don't think my assumption has been far wrong because since the first spiderlings emerged on 29th March less then 100 are the total by the 22nd April. This seems a very low number of young for Araneus diadematus. Looking at the egg sac, it seems all the young have emerged from the light area and I can quite easily see the cast of exoskeletons, the dark area is just dark with no evidence of spiderlings. By the 29th of April, all the spiderlings had ballooned off to pastures new and this gave me a chance to investigate the eggsac. As I opened it, old exoskeletons fell out but also, black rotten eggs. Many more eggs that had rotted were clumped together in the silken sac. I will never know why only half of the eggs proved fertile but it's been a fulfilling experience following this special moment in the life of a garden spider, Araneus diadematus.