Thursday 18 October 2007

11 10 07

There’s a solitary wood ant roaming the colony at the road bend. At the colony on the rock above this, yet more has slid to the rock below, but that landslide, that cityslide, seems abandoned. There’s not a sign of the multitude of webs of a couple of mornings ago. We’re all stunned by last night’s heavy rain. The geometric webs are made by spiders of the Araneidae family. A study on Islay by the Biology Department of the then Paisley College, of Peatland Spider Communities, may reveal, of the 24 spiders listed, that some are orbweavers, like those here. I cannot tell. I scan their names but all that’s revealed is the beauty of another language naming: Pardosa pullata, Alepecosa pulverulenta, Centromerita concinna, Lepthyphantes zimmermanni & Lepthyphantes mengei; the boldly named Pirata piraticus, the posing Antista elegans & Silommetapus elegans, & Oedothorax gibbosus. Some of these are the builders of the hammock webs I saw: money spiders to us. & for sure, they represent the riches of earth & the Earth. Orbweavers, money spiders, wolf spiders, together with other small fauna leading their stamped on & hidden lives, & with gastropods, literally bind the fabric of the earth together. It’s because of these small & slow creatures that I see each trunk a habitat, each stand of bracken or bog-myrtle a copse; a map of someone’s territory.

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