Garden spider
The garden spider is one of the New Forest’s most common orb-web spiders and their sticky wheel-shaped webs are the most familiar looking. It lays egg sacs in vegetation or in outbuildings. When the egg sacs hatch they are filled with tiny yellow and black spiderlings that cluster together and can quickly disperse. They build minute orb webs in the garden and trap many greenfly. As they get bigger so does the size of the web and prey.
In late summer the previous year’s hatchlings become bigger, especially the females as they swell up with the egg mass inside their abdomens. This is when their orb webs tend to dominate our gardens and the wider countryside.
Araneus diadematus
Photo credit: Tone Killick
