I met this handsome little spider, a Gorse orbweb spider (Agalenatea redii) in a local field where once there had been a medieval village (no trace of the village remains above ground, except perhaps if you squint a certain way at small lumps and bumps in the grass).

I was actually checking the dying flower heads of Knapweed for insects, now difficult to find after our prolonged period of drought, and didn’t at first notice the little spider, so well did its colours blend with its surroundings. But then I noticed a series of tiny black eyes watching me from behind a fringe of long pale hairs.

My guide book observes that Agalenatea redii is most often found ‘amongst heath and gorse, and in rough grassland, often in rather damp situations, where it spins its web fairly low down amongst the stems. A retreat is often constructed in an adjacent dead flower head.’ So, perhaps, I had found my watchful little friend sitting comfortably in its retreat, waiting for its next meal to stumble into, and be ensnared in, its web.