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.
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