A plethora of Pholcidae in the privy...

Here it is then, that second update I promised a short while ago...

This one will either be the most exciting thing you have ever seen...

Or...will bore the pants off you...

If it's the latter; you know where the door is, don't slam it as you leave please... 

Alright then, for anybody that is still with me, I vote that we crack on with this update for at least two reasons. Number one, the sooner we get started, the sooner we can scroll down the page and leave these bloody annoying moving images behind. Number two, well, there isn't actually a number two, other than the fact that I need to stop stalling and confess that this update deals solely with....SPIDERS! 

Jeez! After all that, you are still here, no putting you off is there! Okay then, just for the two of us, here it comes...

Sometime in late August, I noticed that the Cellar spider that had become something of a fixture in the little loo (bathroom, John, toilet, WC, Khazi)  had produced an egg sac. I recall thinking at the time that I should maybe photograph it and record the progress. It wasn't until the 25th of the month though, that I actually found the time to get my first image...

I then took another picture on August 30th...

By September 4th the eggs had begun to change in appearance...

Come 7 days later, tiny spiderling eyes were just visible...

The next time I got to photograph them was the 14th and by now they were looking almost ready to emerge...

I checked several times throughout that day, but no real change. Next morning when I looked, I was certain that it was imminent. At 1.50pm I checked again, and sure enough, a few had appeared..

Tiny and almost transparent, but a real treat to see. I left it about 25 minutes and checked again; by which time there were around a dozen newly born spiderlings...

One hour later, they were exiting thick and fast...

I was unable to get any further photographs until just before 7pm the same evening. When I did manage another shot, I was almost speechless at the sight of this huge bundle of baby spiders, still in the jaws of mum!

By now she had lovingly cared for her brood by sitting guard over them relentlessly. I only saw her relinquish her grip on the egg sac once, and within a few minutes, it was safely back with her. Moreover, she had not fed for three weeks, as far as I could tell. Here she is at about 9pm the same evening; now she has in excess of 30 youngsters to tend...

The next morning, September 16th at around 7am, I checked on them once more and this was what I saw...

Finally! Mum was now sitting guard from a little distance and all of the eggs were now empty.

I was really interested to observe what happened next. I had read conflicting reports of post emergence behaviour by the female. One article insisted that she died very soon after the spiderlings emerged. Another said that the young climb onto their mother's back, in a similar way to wolf spiders.

Actually neither of these things happened, as I observed them over the next few days. In fact, very little changed at all. Quite how the multitude of spiderlings will source enough food to sustain them all is beyond me. If they behave like the false widow spiderlings in my garden, then they may well have cannibalistic tendencies!

Whatever becomes of them, it was a privilege to  be gifted with documenting their start in life and I hope that you agree there is something fascinating about witnessing an event that most people will never see: if not, I don't really care ;-)