Pirate Spider egg sac

There’s a small ball of fluff on the bottom of my pressure washer. I don’t know what memory I have of seeing something like it, or recognising it from being online, but I scoop it up and take it to my desk.

It’s the egg sac of a Pirate Spider. It’s about 2 or 3mm across.

There are four species of Pirate Spider in the UK and this egg sac is a distinctive copper colour, so it’s either Ero furcata and Ero cambridgei. Pirate Spiders have the wonderful behaviour of pulling on the strings of another spider’s web, as if they are a trapped item of prey, and then making the web’s spider their prey.

I’m delighted to have a little time to practise macro photography. Each shot is a combination of a dozen or so shots, each of which has a different focus point, which have been stacked together to show only their in-focus parts.

I decide I’m going to try shining an LED light through the egg sac and am thrilled to see the spiderlings inside:

I’m looking forward to getting another opportunity to look deeper into the world through a magnifying glass.