Spiders are new to me even though I have been a Birder / Naturalist for 40 years.
Flicking through the field guide pages, one particular arachnid sprung to
life for me, and that was the big hairy rare Arctosa cinerea, the Grey Wolf Spider.
Living in Northumberland where we have a plethora of fast flowing,
stoney, upland rivers, so I thought I must stand a chance of locating one,
until I read here some one had turned over hundreds of rocks in Wales and
had not found any!
We have some older records of cinerea in Northumberland, and I knew of
some good looking habitat to start in, so today we went to have a
look.
We walked 30 yards and I turned over 3 stones - KaaaaaBooom! our very
first Arctosa cinerea!! It did not leg it for cover as I expected a wolfie
to do and just sat allowing prolonged views and photos. We continued for
another hour and over about 100 metres or so, finding another 7 of them
even having two under one stone. If we continued checking I am sure there
would be many more, they were the commenest spider here.
We got our eye in on 'spider looking stones', ones about hand size, often
balanced on another rock with a small niche underneath and sure enough one
would be there. Some 'nests' were littered with legs of beetles and even a dead bee that had fallen prey to the spider.
A great morning!
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