Cross Orbweaver Spiders

[ CW: spiders (of course) ]

All the way back in May 2022, I noticed something odd suspended in one of the plants. A cluster of orange seeds perhaps?

Upon closer inspection I was delighted to find that the orange seeds were in fact hundreds of tiny baby spiders, which made me want to research them, and that in turn kicked off the bug obsession I've had for the last year and a half. If it weren't for these guys my phone's camera roll might not have hundreds of blurry insect photos on it like it does today.

A large round cluster of tiny orange and black spiders near the stem of a plant. The plant is heavily blanketed in webs.

These brightly coloured spiders are newly hatched Cross Orbweavers. For a few days after hatching the spiderlings will cluster together in a ball and then slowly disperse to set up their own webs elsewhere.

I particularly love their eyes. Like most spiders they have eight eyes, but at this age all of them are very close together and appear to merge into four larger and longer eyes.

Photo of a spiderling on a small web. Some lighter coloured marking are starting to appear on its orange and black abdomen.

Over time the spiderlings will slowly lose their orange colour eventually turning this darker shade! This spider appears to be quite young still, but has already lost most of their orange hues and is starting to develop the leaf-shaped patterns you see on many Orbweaver species.

A small spider on a frayed web. It's body is covered in white and black fur with small patches of orange.

Cross Orbweavers can have a lot of variation in colour, including the yellows and browns you can see in my photos, but also sometimes even reds as well. I haven't seen any red ones in my garden but this page by Jason Steel, has tons of great photos of them as well as other Orbweaver spiders.

Photo of a spider delicately climbing on a single thread of silk.

Despite how varied they can be in colour this species can be easily identified by the cross-shaped marking at the base of their abdomen, which is where they get their name from. You can best see it in this photo, where the spider politely held up their abdomen for me to get a good clear shot. Thank you!

(As a side note, something I learnt whilst researching is that the word for things that are cross-shaped is "cruciform". Cross Orbweavers are truly the most devout of all spiders.)

Close up photo of the spider's abdomen. The cross shape is made up of four white lines and a small circular marking in the middle of them.

I took these last two photos at my Nan's house. This spider was in the process of repairing her web when we found her and was hard to miss due to how absolutely huge she was. Her abdomen appears to have stretched out quite a bit so I assume this spider is gravid, carrying lots of eggs ready to hatch next year.

Sadly the mother more than likely won't survive the winter, but hopefully the spiderlings will be safe. If I'm at my Nan's house in time for them hatching next Spring I'll see if I can get some photos!

Two photos of a huge spider illuminated by the sun.