I saw something interesting this past month which I haven’t seen before. I have some chamomile growing in a large pot out front. During the spring, surrounding maple trees (and probably others) began shedding huge numbers of catkins, which covered the lawn, driveway and any plants I had growing. One morning I noticed what looked at first like a clump of catkins draped over the chamomile blossoms which were just opening up, but found when I came to brush them off, that it was really a cluster of baby spiders just hatching out.
Since spiders devour nuisance insects and serve as baby food for hatchling birds, I let them be. Since the chamomile had just grown this spring, the egg mass must have been laid in the leaves and I hadn’t noticed. There was no sign of the mother spider, so I have no idea what species they were.
Now I’ve seen plenty of baby spiders just hatching out from their egg mass plenty of times before, so spiderlings are nothing new. But the next day I saw something I hadn’t seen before. The mother spider must have been still around, because a long thread, too large to be the doing of the tiny babies, had been spun all the way from the chamomile to a foxglove plant growing nearby in the garden.
My camera is an old digital Panasonic but I managed to capture the thread which in the picture stretches just barely visible from the flower head across to the center and down to the left where the chamomile flower is.
The distance between the flowers was over four feet so it was an impressive achievement. What was even more surprising was that the baby spiders were migrating over to the foxglove along the thread. They looked like tiny tight-rope walkers. Unfortunately, my camera couldn’t really resolve the sight as they were so little. You can see them beginning to congregate on the foxglove below.
By the end of the day, they had all moved over to the foxglove and when I looked the next morning, they were all gone, with only a little webbing to show they had been there.
Once baby spiders hatch out, they spin a long fine thread which acts like a parachute. When a breeze blows, they will float away, attached to the thread, and take up residence wherever they land. This is called ballooning or kiting. While they usually will travel only a few meters, a strong wind can carry them quite a distance, often miles if the conditions are right.
This behavior has been noted for quite some time, all the way back to the ancient Greeks. More recently the 19th Century poet Walt Whitman wrote a poem with a kiting spider as its theme.
A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory; it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them – ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, O my soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, – seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d – till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my soul.
Have a happy July.