Hairy field spider

this Hairy Field Spider has been constructing & destructing its web in the same place outside our backdoor for some weeks now.

This particular evening there were evenly spaced small white lumps in a circle in the web, perhaps they were coincidentally evenly spread, evenly sized prey items?

As on other occasions, it was noticed that this spider hangs in the centre of the web with a fuzzy loose clump of web in front of its abdomen as can be seen in the photo.

It is also observed that if disturbed this spider does not drop down on a fine web thread (as in the nursery rhyme and as referred to in Filmer(2010)p.36), but always makes a rapid exit top left - but then the spider in this observation is Neoscona not Araneus