Spinning a fine way to travel

Then I realised they were not attached to anything, but were moving through the air - sailing is perhaps a better word - with some of them in that horizontal position and others suspended almost, but not quite, upright.

It was an odd and very fascinating sight. It was impossible to see the webs unless they reflected the sun's rays.

I went out to view them at close quarters, but could not find a single one, and then realised the most convenient means of examining them was through my binoculars from that vantage point in the house.

But as the sun moved slowly along its autumn path, so the shadows arrived and, within moments, I lost sight of these curious flying webs.

The fact is, of course, that some spiders use webs as a means of transport through the air.

If a warm morning follows a cool night, a common type of money spider will spin a web and allow it to be carried into the air by the rising currents.

As the currents of air carry the web along, so the tiny spider hangs on rather like a trapeze artist and is carried to a new destination.

Some are believed to travel up to a hundred miles in this way, while a trip of 40 miles or so is quite common.

I must admit I did not see any spiders clinging to the tips of those webs which were floating past my window, but on fine days in the autumn deposits of these webs, literally clouds of them, will fall on fields, gorse bushes and even ships on the sea.

Usually, we become aware of them when the temperature drops and dew forms on their surfaces and upon the more robust webs produced by other species of spider.

Money spiders are just one of more than 600 species in these islands. They are often very small, less than a tenth of an inch, or about a quarter of a centimetre in length, and most are coloured black.

Adult money spiders are very common at this time of year and it might be that people tolerate them more than other spiders because they are often associated with wealth.

It has long been thought unlucky to kill any kind of spider, as an old verse reminds us: "If that you would live and thrive, let the spider run alive."

As far as the money spider is concerned, the old belief was that if one ran over your clothes, it meant good fortune was on its way to you, probably in the form of new clothes!

All the native British spiders are harmless to humans and yet many people fear them for no apparent reason. In the past, however, and even until little more than a century ago, many people thought spiders could inflict a poisonous bite on humans and there is little doubt this created unnecessary fears in some.

Nonetheless, some foreign species are dangerous and there have been instances of them being imported among cargoes of fruit - a couple of years ago, a huge black spider was found among some imported bananas and bit a cargo-handler.

Last year, a nest of foreign poisonous spiders was found in a duct beneath Windsor Castle. Each one had a leg span of four inches (10cm), was coloured black and red and considered big enough to inflict a nasty nip.

No-one seems quite sure where they came from - some suggested they had found their way across the Channel, others thought they were a species previously thought to be extinct and some believed they were a new species. But no-one was brave enough to evict them!

With 600 or so species in this country, the world-wide population of spiders is about 20,000 species - that's a lot of them and there is no doubt they perform a wonderful service for mankind by keeping down the population of troublesome insects.

Within their range, however, are many varieties - one British species, the only one in the world to do this in fact - lives entirely under water in a type of submarine which it builds from its web and fills with air brought down from the surface.

Not every spider makes a web, however. Some leap on to their prey, one hunts by night and another sprays jets of gummed web at insects to ensnare them.

But it is the web which is so intriguing. When compared with the same thickness of steel wire, the spider's web is by far the stronger, yet with a diameter of only 1/200th of a millimetre, it is so light that if a spider spun a strand long enough to encircle the whole world, it would weigh less than six ounces (about 172g).

The web emerges from six spinnerets at the rear of a spider and it can be either sticky or dry as the spider considers necessary.

More amazingly, it is spun at speed - if a spider falls from a ledge, it instantly produces a life-saving web.

Evidence of the work of spiders is all around us at this time of year, both in the countryside and, let's be honest, in our homes.

Recently, I came across a curious superstition concerning the cutting of one's hair.

A friend told me that her late grandfather always believed that his hair should be cut only at the waxing or waning of the moon, and his precise choice depended on whether he wanted to keep his hair short, or whether he wanted to grow it quickly again, as he did most winters.

A little research then told me that some people would never have their hair cut on Good Friday and, in some cases, Thursday was a day when one's hair should never be trimmed.

Fridays and Saturdays were not considered good hair-cutting days either, but that was from the point of view of the barber. It was said a barber would never grow rich by cutting hair on Fridays and Saturdays.

Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays appear to be suitable hair-cutting days, although Sunday is another bad day for this kind of treatment.

There used to be an old Yorkshire saying which went: "Best never be born than Sunday shorn!"

In the days when many people believed in the power of witches, it was thought some of them used human hair in casting their spells and it was therefore vital to safely dispose of one's hair-cuttings.

The most positive method was to burn them, just in case a witch, or a friend of a witch, found them and they later became mixed in some kind of dreadful potion.

Another danger could also come from birds. These might catch sight of a useful looking length of hair and carry it off for nesting material and if this happened, the unfortunate owner of the cast hair would suffer serious headaches.

If the hair thief happened to be a magpie, however, then the hair owner's death would follow within a year and a day.

It follows that our forebears took great care getting rid of their hair-clippings, but even when burning them there was some worrying lore to consider.

If the hairs burned brightly it was a sign of long life, but if they smouldered away or shrivelled during the burning, then their former owner was destined to suffer from ill-health.

If the hairs were merely singed, however, he or she would die within a year and a day. I never realised hairdressing was so dangerous.

A robin appears to be considering our garden as his territory for the coming winter.

For the past week or two, he has been perching on a nearby conifer or wall and singing that plaintive and wistful song which is so much a part of any autumn. This is his means of warning off other robins who might have the same idea.

Happily, our garden offers several sheltered places for the coming winter - one or two thick coverings of ivy, some dense vegetation in forgotten corners and even some dry cover beneath the fuel tank or among the logs gathered ready for our fires all offer sanctuary to robins and other birds as winter intensifies.

We shall be doing our best to care for all our garden birds during the coming months, with one or two bird-feeding stations set in strategic places and a regular supply of water in the bird-bath, both for drinking and bathing.

The robin has already spotted the potential of our bird-bath, being one of its regular customers, and even at this early stage it has been frozen on some early mornings.

And that is one of my first tasks on such mornings - to break the ice and ensure our welcome visitors can wash and drink