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There's a spider the size of a gardening glove in my compost bin. It obviously gets a good living in there, feeding on the flies, woodlice, beetles and earwigs, the remains of which can be vaguely guessed in its untidy sheet of a web. I wouldn

Moving some bricks around the shed yesterday revealed one of my favourite spiders. With a narrow reddish-pink body 25 mm long and long rather slender legs, there is no mistaking the 'woodlouse' spider, Dysdera crocata. It makes no web, but hunts

marble or polished granite.But, as ever, it is the wasps that are making more than their fair share of the humming. And it is also they that are being killed. There are several spider webs amongst the ivy flowers, and some rather fat-looking and obviously

in the thicket of climber on the fence. The first ladybird of the year, a seven-spot, sunned itself on the ivy. And one of my favourite spiders is back.Pisaura mirabilis is a beautifully sleek and elegant creature, dusky grey with a beige streak down its back. It

which of the 14 UK species they might be, I can tell the sex easily. The males (a specimen is pictured above) have huge palps, the long feelers (almost like short extra legs) near the head, that look like they are wearing boxing gloves.Like all spiders

while later he calls out that he has found a giant spider crawling along the wall near the house. I wander over expecting a long-legged harvestman or perhaps a large house spider, Tegenaria, but his word is true. There, plodding through the yarrow

 (except that woodpecker), my compost microcosm is in hibernation torpor at the moment. But I know things will burst open again in spring. Tucked into the overlapping featheredge of the lid are several untidy silk igloos. These are the egg-sacs of the spiders that inhabit

The orb webs of the garden spider, Araneus diadematus are much in evidence as the nights get cooler, especially in the morning when their dew- or rain-covered tracery is revealed all over the bushes.It's fascinating to watch them being created first

though they are tiny compared to the spiders, each burst leaves 20 or 30 struggling in the webs and they are quickly wrapped up by the spiders to eat later. It does mean that we get quite a few of the flies coming indoors to pester the fruit bowl. I

, as it takes to the wing, hearing it buzz off far into the deepening dusk.For the squeamish out there, all I can do is reiterate the proposal made by the 17th century physician, Cheyne, who said something along the lines of: God made horse dung smell so sweet