Beware the lurking orb-weaver spider

The afternoon is hot and quiet. A light breeze rustles the leaves on the trees, but does not mitigate the gentle, insistent heat. The air is rich with musty, hay-like scents – drying and decomposing leaves, perhaps with a hint of manure from some arable field. Wood pigeons clap their wings and arc ponderously between the trees. A little flock of goldfinches twitters scratchily in the top of a bush. The field maples along the edge of Banhaw Wood look dusty and tired. Up close, the lobed leaves are indeed dusty, with a smattering of minute red pimples created by the microscopic activities of the mite Aceria eriobius . Many leaves also sport a few larger, more prominent, pale green galls, created by another mite, A macrochelus . Spread-eagled across a field maple leaf, resting, is a much bigger arachnid, a male garden cross orb-weaver . It has lost its two back left legs, perhaps escaping from a bird or an unwelcoming female orb-weaver? Various plants are showing the scars of the summer, but not all are as weary as the field maple . In the wood many brambles have fresh and glossy leaves, their blackberries not quite in full season. A southern hawker dragonfly hunts along the shaded ride. A stick of brown liquorice patterned with apple-green spots, it flies a foot or two off the ground, quartering, effortlessly turning sharply one way and another, then banking and reversing. In the distance a waking tawny owl hoots. A large four-spot orb-weaver living in the meadow has sewn three timothy grass seed heads into an arched shelter from which she monitors her great disc of a web. White dots mark out a crucifix on the back of the garden cross orb-weaver, but the four-spot orb-weaver has four large white spots in a square on its back. This one is the size of a hazelnut – olive green with a tinge of orange. Along the hedgerow the dark bush-crickets have started their evening chorus of short, papery chirps.