"Each tiny tot means a lot"

My son's been letting me use his very classy macro lens and I've been having fun finding things to shoot in the wilderness that passes for the garden, and in the foliage and rough grass all around. I haven't had to go far to discover interesting material, in fact I often find objects of curiosity close at hand, missed by one's eye despite being under one's nose.

Here beside the path in a Potentilla bush is something not dissimilar to the caterpillar nursery I blipped a couple of days ago. It's a spider nursery - only in this case the babies have not been left to fend because there on guard is mother spider. She is indeed a Nursery Web Spider, Pisaura mirabilis, and within her silken cradle are her cluster of tiny spiderlings, hundreds bunched together in a dark mass that is just visible through the web where her feet gently touch and sense their presence.

The reproductive habits of this spider are complex. The smaller males come courting with a gift-wrapped food parcel in order that their voracious intended does not mistake the suitor himself for a snack. After passing the parcel he may play dead until she is sufficiently distracted by the meal, when he seizes the opportunity to copulate. (Some male spiders try their luck with inedible offerings, a cheap trick that doesn't achieve gratification.)

The female spider wraps her fertilized eggs in a cocoon which she carries around in her fangs until they are ready to hatch, then she parks it under a leaf and weaves the protective tent into which the spiderlings emerge. She remains on guard until they have completed their first moult and are ready to disperse. Nursery web spiders are aggressive and can dispatch small predators with a powerful bite.

Maternal behaviour in arthropods is relatively rare but it does exist in earwigs and a few others, while social insects like ants and bees also take care of their offspring. Obviously this serves to maximise the chances of their survival but it's hard not to perceive a certain tenderness in this Spider-Mum's watchful vigil.

A long time ago I heard on the radio a country and western song I never forgot. It's called
I Wish All My Children Were Babies Again. Sadly there's no video of it being sung but the lyrics go like this

I wish all my children were babies again
Playing around my knee
Each tiny tot means a lot
In my album of memories
I wish I could tuck them in their little beds
And hum them a lullaby strain
I'd take ev'ry heartache and never complain
If my children were babies again

I asked an old lady one day
If all of her wishes came true
Her eyes filled with tears as she turned back the years
Her mem'ry quickly flew
She said, "Here's the wish I'd make
If I had only one to take"

I wish all my children were babies again
Playing around my knee
Each tiny tot means a lot
In my album of memories
I wish I could tuck them in their little beds
And hum them a lullaby strain
I'd take ev'ry heartache and never complain
If my children were babies again

Once (before I had children of my own) I worked on a hospital ward for demented patients. I was struck by the way that the elderly women were so often preoccupied, in their confusion, with the worries and responsibilities of early motherhood. They would pace around searching for a 'lost' baby or plead to go home because 'the children will be back from school soon'.
The maternal instinct can be a killer.