At Knader Wood, near Ballyshannon in Co Donegal, recently I noticed some final instar peacock butterfly larvae on two of which were spiders. What were the spiders, and had they captured the larvae for food or for laying eggs?
Frank Smyth
St Fintan's Park, Dublin
They were the candy-stripe spider, Enoplognatha ovata, from looking at your photograph. It is a powerful hunter that targets quite large prey, such as bees and hoverflies, and now obviously larvae, three or four times larger than it.
I'm sending you a photograph of a spider-like creature sitting astride a web on the seed head of a sedum plant. Its legs are about an inch long, and it appears to have a white sac suspended underneath.
Pat Ferguson
Ashford, Co Wicklow
It is the nursery web spider, Pisaura mirabilis. She makes a large spherical egg sac that she carries under her sternum. When the young are about to emerge she hangs the sac on low vegetation and weaves a nursery tent of fine silk strands around it, then stands guard.
Jim Carolan from Navan and Britta Denning from Virginia sent photographs of the brown hawker dragonfly, Aeshna grandis, for identification.
I have been feeding birds all year round. It makes life a lot easier for the parents to get food easily for themselves.
Richard Bono
Clahane, Co Kerry
There were two reports from Wexford (from Claire Tyrell and Helen Condon) of enormous numbers of dead crabs on the beach at Cahore.
Ethna Viney welcomes observations and photographs at Thallabawn, Louisburgh, Co Mayo, F28 F978, or by email at viney@anu.ie. Please include a postal address