As the weather warms up, some of our nocturnal spiders will start feeling adventurous. They’ve survived the winter and grown to maturity as the food supply improves.

This is the cue for some of the males to leave the comforts and security of their webs, and look for females. This will undoubtedly shock and horrify some of the human inhabitants of these isles. For our nocturnal spiders are typically, much, much larger than the diurnal species.

Last night I noticed this guy wandering around the walls of the garage.

Link to larger image
Actually, not this specific spider, the spider above is one I prepared earlier

He’s Cambridgea foliata, a common forest sheetweb spider. He’s also very much doomed when he starts his search for females. There is no need to get out the fly spray or the rocks. As part of his drive to mate with as many females as possible, he won’t be eating. In fact, there’s no way he can actually catch prey now that he has left his web. So, all he has to look forward to is a series of brief encounters with females, followed by death from exhaustion and starvation. There’s going to be a few of these corpses piling up around houses near bush in the next month or two.