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Available for over a year
Spiders love the nooks and crannies in drystone walls. The Peak District has 100s of miles of them and many different species of spider, from web builders to fast hunters, live there. Wolf spiders race after their prey on long, powerful legs. Jumping spiders leap from a hiding place. The tiny money spiders build webs like hammocks for prey to fall into and lace weaving spiders construct mats of web with recoiling strands that drag the prey to the spider. The limestone walls of the White Peak are not only a beautiful feature of this part of the National Park, they were built with great skill and patience by generations of skilled workmen. Mary Colwell meets Sarah Henshall, lead ecologist with Buglife and Simon Nicholas, the local Ranger for the National Trust, to discover the 350 million year old limestone that forms the walls and search for the mini beasts that live in their depths.
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