As a spider-hunting specialist, Mike Waite’s artillery of choice is a pooter. It’s a homemade sucking contraption made from his daughter’s old Calpol syringe and a pair of his wife’s tights (“I like to think they were old ones”), which he uses as a filter so he doesn’t inhale any spiders.
I’m with Waite, from Surrey Wildlife Trust, on Brentmoor Heath, which is partly owned by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and managed by the trust. It sounds like New Year’s Eve, with continuous bangs from the shooting range. We’re in the buffer zone, on lowland heathland, where the public are allowed and spiders are just waking up from their winter slumber. We see a wolf spider, a gorilla jumping spider, and a raft spider (which recently featured on David Attenborough’s Wild Isles) all in a single morning.
Arachnids are creative hunters – some use speed, others webs, while the raft spider catches its prey in a pond. “You don’t get any vegetarian spiders,” says Waite.
This may seem like an odd way to spend a morning but more citizen scientists are getting involved in spider hunting, and the areas of MoD shooting sites where the public are allowed are among the best places in the UK to do it.
The MoD is one of the country’s largest landowners, owning 169 sites of special scientific interest, which means they have the highest protections for nature, as on Brentmoor Heath. Many of these sites are heathland habitats because the land is open and not suitable for agriculture but lends itself to combat simulation.
The habitat is kept low and scrubby, with relatively few trees and strips of bare soil, called “waffle lines”, made using a digger, which means wasps and bees can bury themselves in the ground. The aim is to have as many niche habitats in as small a space as possible.
An aroma of coconut is released by the gorse as it wakes up to spring with its bright yellow flowers. The chiffchaffs – which have flown here from Africa – are sussing out breeding spots. We spot Dartford warblers, brimstone butterflies and the season’s first slow worm, bathing under a tin sheet as it warms itself into the new year. On this single site, Waite thinks there are “multiple millions of spiders”, with between 250 and 300 species.
Surrey is a great place to be an arachnid enthusiast. There is a diversity of habitats that suit them here (13% of the UK’s lowland heathland is in Surrey) and, historically, Surrey has been home to idle rich hobbyists and rural clergymen with time to count them, says Waite.
Spider hunting is having something of a renaissance. The British Arachnological Society (BAS) has already been sent 57,000 records of spider sightings this year.
We’re here finding as many of them as possible using a series of “pitfall” traps, which Waite set up overnight. These are just plastic cups wedged into the ground – the spiders fall into them, and in the morning we come around to identify them before releasing them. “I still can’t handle the big ones,” says Waite.
In one of the plastic cups, we find the wolf spider (Trochosa terricola), named after its hound-like hunting techniques. We know this one is a male because it has black front legs, which they use to appease females. “They are such fearsome predators they have to be careful with courtship,” Waite says. “Larger females often see males as prey so as they approach them they wave their front legs, as if to say, ‘I’m a male of your species, don’t eat me.’”
We also find a gorilla jumping spider (Evarcha arcuata), which looks like a tiny silverback with big forearms and pale abdomen. “When they look at you, they’re absolutely stunning,” he says. True to their name, they leap on prey, and their family name, Salticid, comes from the Latin for gymnast or dancer.
Many of the spiders we see are considered nationally rare, partly because we are on a very specialised habitat, but also because there are fewer eyes on the ground looking for them compared with groups like birds and mammals. “Spiders are not studied well – the status we give them is limited to what we know – but they’re actually everywhere,” says Waite.
There are more than 650 kinds of spiders in the UK, with many discoveries probably still to be made. Waite’s biggest find came in 2020 when he discovered a great fox-spider (Alopecosa fabrilis), one of the largest spiders in Britain but presumed extinct having not been spotted since 1999. He found it on an undisclosed MoD site in Surrey after a two-year search. It is a night-time hunter, known for its speed, agility and eight eyes, which give it wrap-around vision.
He has since spotted the species again, this time in Dorset, on a site near Wareham, a sighting recently confirmed by the Natural History Museum. “I was even more excited to see it again,” says Waite, who has a picture of the spider printed on his credit card.
He has focused on spiders for the past five years, after “completing” more accessible groups, he says. “I’ve seen all the breeding birds, butterflies and dragonflies – they’re relatively small groups. With spiders, there are a huge number of species living in a large area, so I’d like to think I’ll make more discoveries.”
Spotting spiders also has a serious side: as an indicator species, they can tell us about the overall health of the environment, or how it might be changing in response to the climate crisis. Increasingly, spiders are turning up in places where they have never been seen before.
“Without the dedication of these recorders we simply wouldn’t know how our spider fauna is doing,” says Richard Gallon, who is the spider recording scheme (SRS) national organiser at the BAS.
“There’s definitely been an increased interest in British spiders in the last few years,” he adds. This is partly due to the publication in 2017 of a user-friendly identification book called Britain’s Spiders. Smartphones also have made recording spiders in Britain easier than ever because people can share photos on social media. “These online communities are very supportive helping with identifications,” says Gallon.
For Waite, his love of looking for spiders came later in life. Over the Easter weekend, he’ll be in Greece and will probably be hunting for the great fox-spider’s closest relative, the Easter fox-spider. “Thirty years ago, I wouldn’t have thought I had time. I’m 63 and I feel as if I’m on a busman’s holiday – this is my life and I’m so lucky.” he says. “When I go on holiday I’m just looking for wildlife.”
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