In 2025 I made a conscious effort to find Enoplognatha latima more widely in Cheshire. This was easily achieved by collecting all Enoplognatha specimens I came across, rather than just the first half dozen I usually take. On one collecting trip, beating shrubs in the green spaces and small parks around the Mountain Pleasant Housing Estate in Winsford, I collected 6 male and 30 female Enoplognatha’s. All the females were E. ovata but 2 of the males were E. latima which could have easily been overlooked without the over collecting.

With this in mind in 2026 I collected all of the small pale Philodromus specimens I was beating from trees, shrubs and hedges in the churchyards I visited across Cheshire. As one would expect the majority of the adult specimens were P. albidus, but on three occasions a single female P. rufus was collected. So far no males have been detected in Cheshire. I have also found that some rural churchyards don’t contain any P. albidus /rufus, whilst on the same day a few miles away at another urban/suburban churchyard or park the species can be frequent.

This technique of over collecting has also worked for other species such as Megalepthyphantes sp near collinus, which has been found as a background species when collecting all of the Lepthyphantes minutus/leprosus/Labulla thoracica from around church walls at night by torchlight. This has happened in both Lincolnshire and Cheshire.

Back in the late 1990’s in Leicestershire I remember beating quite a few sub-adult well marked Philodromus from pasture woodland at the Croxton Park Estate in the east of the county on a Leicestershire Entomological Society trip. Then a few weeks later, having secured permission from the land owner, returning to record the first county record of an adult P. preadatus. It occurred to me that most of the large parks in Leicester were the former grounds of long defunct pre-war estates of the once landed gentry, that still contained many of their specimen trees particularly oaks. P. preadatus proved to be frequent on these parks, being beaten from specimen oaks standing in deserts of mown grass.

The other underworked habitats are encompassed by parish/other denomination churchyards; these have 24/7 unrestricted access, are fairly evenly distributed across each county and often contain centuries old buildings and trees. During the colder months I have recorded Cryptachea blattea in almost all hectads covering Cheshire by visiting churchyards at night by torchlight. The hours of darkness also bring out all of the spiders that have spent the day hidden under overhangs and in holes/cracks in the masonry; this not only includes the usual common synanthropic species but there is always the chance of something rarer turning up.

Then come the late spring/early summer I return to beat the yew trees for P. collinus, Hypomma cornutum, Hylyphantes graminicola, Atea sturmi, Gibbarenea gibbosa, and Lathys humilis, and the other shrubs and hedges for P. albidus/rufus, Nigma puella, Ero aphana and Theridions. A month or so later the first of the Achaearanea’s both A. lunata and A. simulans can be collected by searching beneath the arms of the stone crosses on Victorian graves or by beating shrubs and hedges. These crosses are also home to several species of Theridion including; T. tinctum, T. varians and T. pictum.

The species mentioned above are only some of the highlights from these habitats with most trips to churchyards either by torchlight or daylight producing a list of between 10 and 30 species. Some interesting Harvestmen have also been recorded from Cheshire churchyards with Leiobunum sp. A being found in small numbers in several places and once in very large numbers. Dicranopalpus lavatus has also been found occasionally in the company of Oligolophus hanseni at night by torchlight.