Weird garden spider behaviour

[Jon1982]

I have an adult female garden spider that I have been watching for some weeks, which has spun a well positioned and often very impressive web between a couple of outbuildings.

I was watching this spider yesterday evening and it was exhibiting some unusual behaviour. It had a fully intact web. It crawled across the top strand and onto the roof of the outbuilding. It then crawled down the roof, dragging a line behind it which was attached to the middle of the top strand of the web. It then anchored the line and crawled back half way along it, before dropping down. It was as if it was trying to build another web attached to the first one. It seemed to be having some difficulty in attaching the bottom strand, since it was a slippery dustbin lid, and eventually gave up and went back up to its web.

I've spent a lot of time over the years watching these spiders but I've never seen anything quite like that before. Any ideas what it was up to? Or has my spider gone a bit dopey in its old age?

[No.9 Spider]

Possibly if it's a large web it may be attaching more anchor lines for more stability?


No.9 Spider

[wildherbalian85]

Building a new web before moving out of the old??