For the love of all that's holy, please identify this arachnid!

Crawling along the wall of my house earlier today!

Garden-variety European orb weaver.

Araneus Diadematus

False Widow, I believe.

EDIT: Maybe not!

It/she looks preggers, if so how many of the little blighters can we expect?

Is that all spider or is it making off with one of your chestnut mushrooms?

In your garden you say?

Shockingly it looks like it is a Garden Spider (aka cross spider, aka Araneus diadematus)

Got a couple that make glorious webs outside my kitchen window (and slightly less glorious ones across my doorway where I keep walking into them).

Thankyou Gordon, that’s it I think. It was a beauty and so heavy (heavily pregnant?) that it could only manage horizontal movement.

Great picture, spiders are fascinating creatures. I wish more folk took time to look at them instead of squealing and killing them.

Mister P I wholeheartedly agree. I have no desire to get up close in the real world to some of the more amazing exotic species (like those Harry the spider keeps) but I find them fascinating and many species are utterly stunning to look at.

Why people feel the need to squish or hoover them is a total mystery to me, especially our genteel British species.

My garden is full of Orb Weavers, mainly because I’m never out there to disturb their webs, perfectly happy to let them be, until everything stops growing for the winter and I get out there and dig up or cut down some stuff I don’t like, and plant some stuff that won’t block light so much.

I’m getting spiders i can actually hear running across the floor i swear!

It’s when you can hear them pattering across the wall behind you when you’re lying in bed I find unnerving…

Cross on its back means standard garden spider…I think.
This time of year they are fully grown so at their biggest and looking for mates.

I wish the spider(s) that keeping leaving web strands across my front door would stop…

Yes, its a garden spider. I’ve got a pet one at the mo. Did you know – they can LEARN?
This one built its web on my porch. It broke when I leant my bike against the wall, so it rebuilt it. Then it broke when I mowed the lawn. It rebuilt it, but this time right across the entrance. I removed it twice, so now it’s rebuilt it on the side, with the fixing strands away from the path. So clever.
Big one it is too.

I have ones that live behind each wing mirror on my car, the one on the driver’s side stopped attaching web strands to the window so it doesn’t get screwed up when I drop it. I occasionally tap the web so his legs appear (the vibrating when it’s blowing a bit as I drive doesn’t seem to fool him though). It’s always a shame when it’s rained as the extra weight means the web gets blown off when I drive, I always figure he’ll have a busy/tiring day 🙁

If you have one on the wall you can create a little maze for it with a wet bar of soap.

They aren’t able to cross the moist soapy, lines because they have tiny oily hairs on their feet which allow them to stick to vertical surfaces.

Hours of fun if there’s nothing on telly.

Wasps love to prey on those fat-bodied buggers. Every year one or sometimes two larger wasps will hover around the window searching for them.

It’s a bit of a standoff and I can see why the wasps hunt in pairs – one goes in while the other comes in from behind. One sting and that’s it – a few seconds later the spider falls to the floor and with barely any resistance gets eaten alive from behind by the wasps. When they’ve had their fill the remains of the still moving carcass is not too dissimilar to the way in which a whale has its flesh removed in squares.

Harsh nature…

Same with blue tits.

Which is why we had a blue tit in the flat the other day.

We’ve got one that lives inside by the kitchen window. Lives mostly on fruit flies it seems. Wonderful colours when backlit by the afternoon sun!

What is this thing, a bar of soap. ??

What is this thing, a bar of soap. ??

Keepin’ it old school

A bar of soap is used for grindring isn’t it?

Spidring. It’s very niche.