I mentioned in a post last week (Spider: Steatoda nobilis, 25 March) that I’d had confirmation of my identification of two recent spider finds on my local park railings; this is the second of those spiders, Zygiella x-notata, also known as the Silver-sided sector spider.

Though I didn’t see it, this orb weaver is most well known for a singular feature of its web – for some unknown reason it always misses out one sector when constructing its circular web (you can see a photo of this on Wikipedia here), and so another of its common names is Missing sector orb weaver.

According to my guide book, these spiders are often found in places occupied by humans, so houses, sheds, and other types of building, as well as amongst vegetation in urban areas, and they are widespread around the world. The individual I found was too busy consuming its prey to be concerned with web building but I will look out for that distinctive web during future checks of the park railings.