Another Life: The sun is taking longer to clear the hill these mornings, having first to scorch its way through the candyfloss cloud at its summit, writes Michael Viney.
But then it gets the chance to scintillate, searching out the randy gleam in the eyes of rams in the rushes (not long now, lads) and the glitter of spider webs along the fence.
I try not to think about spiders for most of the year, being in general an arachnophobe, but October reminds me how well they do what they do. I love being beside the lake and watching spider-bearing strands of gossamer glinting in mid-air against the darkness of the cliff (gossamer from "goose summer", full of gently drifting goose-down, thus anticipating this balmy, globally-warmed autumn).
One of the few photographs I can stand to look at in the glossy Hamlyn Guide to Spiders is of a little Pardosa about to be snatched off its feet by a strand of silk: this "ballooning" is how many kinds of spiderlings disperse. But in autumn, most ballooners are adult money spiders, the Linyphiids, supposed to bring good luck to anyone they land on. They climb to a height - on a fence, say - then face into the wind and work their spinnerets to pay out several strands of silk into the breeze until lift-off is achieved.
Close observation of spiders is still difficult for me unless they are smallish and brightly coloured or patterned, when aesthetics may win out. I offer as an early childhood trauma the morning in a Catholic "open air" school in Surrey when a very large, black spider appeared in a basin in the washroom. The highly-agitated nuns, black and flapping, poured whiskey on the insect until it succumbed. Nowadays, I suppose, they would have one of those long-handled "spider savers" recently designed by an Irishman. The nuns undoubtedly believed the spider came up through the plughole, whereas we all know, don't we, that wandering spiders, especially footloose males, get stranded on slippery surfaces.
For unflinching observation I quote from a Mayo reader, Barbara Deegan, gazing recently through her kitchen window near Foxford, where a large garden spider had established her radial (or orb) web: "We saw a very much smaller spider appear at the corner of the web while the large one stayed in the centre. The small one kept darting in to the large one and rapidly retreating. It kept this up for an hour or more while the larger spider seemed to become hypnotised and began to move more and more slowly. Eventually, the smaller spider seemed to merge head-on and stayed for a minute or two. The large one stayed quite still for this time.
"The small one suddenly darted back up to the corner and the large one turned right round two or three times and seemed to shake itself and then resume its normal posture." Two or three weeks later, "we found her up under the eaves with a large froth of yellow eggs in a bunch beside her. She looked very diminished." This catches exactly the nervousness of the much smaller male, who signals his presence by tapping out a signal on the web. He has, indeed, to subdue the female, making repeated approaches without being attacked, and to entice her on to a special mating thread that he has spun. He carries his sperm in his palps and hopes to stuff it in before escaping. Only towards the end of autumn, after many such promiscuous matings, and worn out for lack of food, is he really likely to be eaten.
Many of the males of Ireland's 375 indigenous spider species have to perform a courtship dance, waggling their decorative bits - if they have any - and shaking their abdomens in a sort of belly-dance to produce a high-pitched vibration. Such males will perform to a mirror and even, by accident, to other males, whereupon there can be trouble. In some species, deviousness pays. The male nursery web spider catches an insect, wraps it up and goes looking for a female to offer it to, effecting the mating while she's eating.
Only in the past 10 years have arachnologists arrived at anything like a full picture of Ireland's spiders and their distribution, largely thanks to the biological monitoring of Environmentally Sensitive Areas such as the Mournes (go to the Northern Ireland Environment and Heritage Service website at www.ehsni.gov.uk/pubs/pubs_search_results.asp and find Dr Damian McFerran's checklist and commentary). Completeness, as he admits, is still very dependent on where arachnologists have spent their holidays. The spider Psilochorus simoni, however, is "usually found in wine cellars", which suggests another aspect to the enterprise.