{"id":235656,"date":"2025-10-31T09:30:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T09:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/235656\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T09:30:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T09:30:09","slug":"rare-purseweb-spider-discovered-by-visitor-at-kinver-edge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/235656\/","title":{"rendered":"Rare purseweb spider discovered by visitor at Kinver Edge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;As we were walking up through the heathland, I just noticed this very strange-looking spider,&#8221; said Matthew Rigby, who discovered the creature.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He put the photo through an AI app to help identify it, he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think this is the most excited I&#8217;ve been, finding anything on Kinver,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The British Arachnological Society <a href=\"https:\/\/britishspiders.org.uk\/sites\/default\/files\/2022-04\/Purseweb%20HOMEPRINT.pdf\" class=\"ssrcss-f6h2dj-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">describes the purseweb spider as &#8220;scarce&#8221;, external<\/a>. Most sightings are in the south of England, though there are &#8220;scattered outposts&#8221; elsewhere, it added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Kingsford Heath was restored by Worcestershire County Council about two decades ago, with its ongoing management now the responsibility of the National Trust.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The trust said heathland was characterised by wide, open landscape, with scattered trees and low shrubs, such as gorse, heather and grasses.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The sandy soils provide an ideal habitats for lots of invertebrates, including the purseweb spider, they said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;As we were walking up through the heathland, I just noticed this very strange-looking spider,&#8221; said Matthew Rigby,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-235656","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}