A Ball Of Cross Orbweaver Spider Babies

A neat “find” in our backyard recently was a ball of spider babies, hundreds of Cross Orbweaver spiderlings.

My morning prowl by our boulevard garden in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, took me aback when I noticed that the Shasta Daisy plants seemed to be sprinkled with gold.

As we have learned, a female garden spider will lay hundreds of eggs together in the fall and then wrap them in an egg sac to shelter the eggs over winter. Fortunately, we do not remove any leaves or plant debris in the spring simply because we are hoping for nature to run its course on our property.

Although we found the ball of spiderlings, we did not find the egg sac.

Over the course of two days, the Cross Orbweaver spider babies got busy spinning little webs to connect their ball to other plants and also the tree standing in the garden.

Working very carefully with our camera to avoid disturbing the spiderlings, Bob and I were able to capture a few closeup pictures of the babies working on their webs.

Late in the day, after a hard day’s work, the baby spiders regrouped into balls for their afternoon sleep.

After a couple of days of building webs from their ball, the baby Cross Orbweaver spiderlings disappeared high into the tree. Hopefully some of them will survive the coming summer, and come fall, one of them will create another egg sac full of promise.

Frame To Frame – Bob and Jean