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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Matt Prince" data-source="post: 1813775" data-attributes="member: 52862">Sounds like you've got a couple of good ideas of your own Andrew. Focusing on the canal could be quite rewarding in terms of showing up the biodiversity of the various local microhabitats. Starting prep now is defo a good idea! This year started slowly enough but now I'm in way over my head!Don't know what you've got on the spider book front already - I'm using the standard Collins guide by Micheal Roberts. Its good but I found it daunting as a beginner, partly because the spiders are a difficult group. The small amount of spiders in the Chinery insect guide is actually quite a good opener to the commoner species of the group. One thing I've had to get used to - not being willing to kill specimens for something as frivolous as a year list - is that with the spiders you often can't do better than identify to a genus, or possibly a couple of closely related species. The german photo book (Kosmos-Atlas Spinnentiere Europas) I got second hand at the obs was a nice bonus as it had photos of many species in extreme close up, but useless for a non german speaker without Roberts as a back up!</blockquote>