A garden warbler identified, thanks to the power of social media

 When I photographed this bird, that I watched catching caterpillars in a wild raspberry thicket in Weardale, I knew it was a warbler but couldn't decide which one, so I posted the pictures on Twitter. Within a day at least 20 helpful, experienced birders had identified it as a garden warbler. There's a lot wrong with this social media platform but during the six years that I've been on it I've linked up with a community of scores of naturalists who share their amazing expertise and their daily delight in the living organisms they encounter. At its best, a social media platform can operate like a virtual natural history field club, in much the same way as real field clubs worked in the 'good old days', but without the direct personal contact. 

It now looks as though Twitter is in terminal decline, under its new ownership, so I've recently opened a new account on Threads, as durham_country_diarist (same as on Instagram). Many of the people I followed on Twitter have migrated there too, though I suspect that most of us will keep out Twitter accounts too, until it finally implodes. So far it's all a bit chaotic over there, but it's already clear that over the course of the coming weeks a new Threads 'virtual field club' will develop, with old friends and some new faces.  

Cellar spider catches a woodlouse (arachnophobes look away now)

 

The cellar spider Pholcus phalangioides is a welcome guest in our house. In summer it's a very effective fly killerand it also catches and eats much larger spiders, of the kind that sometimes turn up in the bath or race across the ceiling and floor when the cold weather brings them indoors, in autumn. A few cobwebs in corners of the ceilings are a small price to pay for these services.

Sometimes these spiders catch woodlice, which is what this one has trapped in its web, alongside a fly that has already been encased in silk. But this woodlouse was a prize catch, because its a female that was carrying baby woodlice, known as mancas, in its brood pouch, under those armoured plates. They are the tiny translucent woodlice, as yet with no hardened armour, that you can see in the photograph below.

Female woodlice carry their young in a brood pouch under their body, and at this stage the young only have six pairs of legs. After their first moult they develop an extra body segment and after the second moult they grow an additional pair of legs, so they are then classified as juveniles with the full adult complement of seven pairs of legs.

For a closer look at woodlice, check out my Beyond the Human Eye blog here.