The insect challenges: We test ants’ taste buds; explore spiders and webs; chase butterflies; race snails, rescue a caterpillar; find amazing flat spiders; play ‘how many bugs can you find in 2 minutes?; Rescuing a beetle; finding worms and making a wormery.

237 – Testing ants taste preferences

Friday 9 May.  Sunny. 21°C

We haven’t done a lot of insect challenges. The last one I can think of is how many insects can you find in a minute, which was a couple of months ago now. I suspect sunny weather has distracted us as the snails and slugs are being inconspicuous. The ants are everywhere though so I thought we’d start there and begin a new strand for filling in as we encounter more tiny creatures.

We had a fairly disastrous encounter with an ant farm last year… B got a set and we set it up and then realised you had to catch about 50 ants to get it to work. After several hours sweating outside and managing only about 5 at most we gave up and felt cross. I’m not feeling energetic enough to try that again so thought we might think about an experiment instead. B likes experiments and I suspect the ants won’t object to this one either.

We put a little bit of paper down outside the front door where there are always a couple of ants wandering about. We add a little bit of jam. We then mix sugar with boiled water, let it cool and add a bit of that too. Then we watch to see what they go for. I’m betting the jam. B guesses the water. She’s definitely right. It takes a few seconds for an ant to appear and it makes it’s preferences very clear. It’s fun and I’m kicking myself for not bringing out more options. Honey? Banana? So many possibilities. Clearly we’ll be visiting this idea again!

234 – Exploring spiders webs

Monday 12 May.  Cloudy. 21°C

It’s a busy Monday evening and I have a challenge waiting for B when she gets home from school. She has to find the spiders web in the front garden…

I’ve spotted a brilliant one outside the living room window. Possibly the first of the year. I saw it because it has a ginormous bit of moss hanging off it… B sees that first too. “What’s the moss doing?” Neither of us can think how it’s got there but the fact the web is holding it is pretty impressive.

High above are two minute spiders with bright green bodies who are a bit alarmed at our interest. We examine the edge of the web and see a skin one spider has shed there. We can’t get the web to come out on camera so we try gently spraying water on it. Most of the water goes on the windows… I reckon the spiders won’t mind. It’s very dry at the moment. I’m not sure it helps the picture but at least we ruled it out as an idea.

224 – Chasing butterflies

Thursday 22 May.  Sunny. 20°C

There’s a butterfly in the garden. In the last couple of weeks, with the sunny weather, we’ve started to see them out and about but this is the first one we’ve got close to. It’s brown with yellow spots.

B tries to catch butterflies. She’ll stalk up and try and get her hands gently cupped round them. If she succeeds she’ll talk to it for a bit and then let it go. She’s not getting this one. It lands in a bush for a while for us to admire it but as soon as we get close it’s off, heading over the fence and off on adventures.

203 – Racing snails

Thursday 12 June.  Wet. 17°C

It’s a rainy day in June. It’s time for snail racing! B has a club tonight so I decide to find the snails for her. There’s a lack of little ones but I find four big grown up ones in different bits of the garden. I opt for ones which are moving – so I know they’re definitely still alive and not dormant. I put them in a bucket with some lettuce which they like a lot.

When B gets home she draws a racing grid in chalk on the garden path. She’s refusing to touch them. I remember the days she used to pick them up and stick them on her t-shirt. Getting older can lead to less fun! I pick them up and put them on their starting positions and we empty out the lettuce from the bucket and put it at the other end.

They’re surprisingly quick. One hares off in completely the wrong direction but the other three head for the lettuce. As the first two approach B moves the lettuce into a smaller pile and is amused to see them slither right past it. It’s the hare and the tortoise tale of snail racing – the slowest finally gets to the prize and enjoys it.

187 – Rescuing a caterpillar

Friday 27 June.  Cloudy. 22°C

We found a bright orange and black caterpillar on a pillar outside our back door. It didn’t look happy. It had no food and it was a bit exposed so we got a box, put some lettuce in it and found a teeny twig to move it with.

Turns out the little twig was a good idea. B’s worked out how to find out what species things are using google chrome and we discover it’s a Cinnabar moth caterpillar and it’s poisonous. B is freaked out and suggests we take it out back and release it. It’s not eating the lettuce so she googles what they eat.

Turns out its ragwort. We don’t know what that is but we get a picture and go out the back to explore. About two metres from where we found it is a healthy looking ragwort plant complete with two other orange and black caterpillars. B holds the box next to it and the caterpillar goes from very sleepy to very fast very quickly. It seems happy to be home.

173 – The most fun spiders ever

Saturday 12 July.  Sunny. 32°C

We’re at St Fagans National Museum of History and we’ve found the BEST spiders. B is undecided about spiders at the moment. She plays being scared of them but will get close with a bit of encouragement. These ones are totally fantastic. We’ve got a wooden table top and they stretch out flat on it, looking just like grains in the wood. Then when you poke them they run…

It’s an ongoing fun part of the day. Spotting them and then, if B is feeling brave, giving them a little nudge with a pen or a stick. When we pack up we find quite a few trying to sneak into the car and the kitten finds more when we unpack it. She likes them too though the spiders are not so keen on her.

168 – How many bugs can you find in 2 minutes?

Thursday 17 July. Cloudy. 22°C

This is a lot of fun. We tried it back in March in the front garden and it was struggle to find things. Not so anymore! B suggests we do two minutes rather than one and that we write down all the different things we find. I time on my phone.

At first I thought we weren’t going to find any. There’s not many snails and slugs this year, then our eyes clue in. I find the bees first, then I head to the broken wood to find a woodlouse. B copies me but then branches off but we end up with pretty much the same list of 8 or 9 different things (bumble bee; woodlouse; midge; ant; beetle; spider; snail; wasp). I get a hover fly as well “That’s not fair, I don’t know what that is”! We find it still lingering in the pear tree so I show her. We both have found the massive spider in the shed by looking for webs. We find the ladybirds as soon as we’ve finished. So we do it again…

B: “This time, 45 minute quick round. You can just write the first two letters of what it is down”.

She beats me by miles this time, 7 to my 4. Next time I reckon we’ll do a ‘how many can you collect’ but it’s fun just clocking them. The different flying things are really exciting and B doesn’t moan once about the bees though she didn’t like the spider. When we’re heading back inside she lingers and there’s a squeak of excitement. She’s found a cricket in the flower pot. I’m impressed she manages to catch it. It hops away very dramatically.

121 – Beetle rescue

Friday 29 August.  Cloudy. 18°C

A big black beetle is walking down some steps towards the flat we’re staying in. It’s not a good place for it. As we watch, it reaches the edge and drops to the next one. B goes leaf hunting. She finds a little blackberry leaf. I’m worried we’re going to see a repeat of the last time she tried bug moving, with bug falling off half way across the road, so I look for something more substantial. I offer her a bit of bracken but she’s found her sleeve works much better.

The beetle likes B’s arm. It wanders along it quite happily and she manages to walk about 50 metres to a sandy patch of ground. She puts it down and it heads off in a healthier direction.

56 – Finding worms and making a wormery

Thursday 6 November. Rainy. 13°C

We’ve had a ‘make your own wormery’ set on the shelf for ages. I bought it, with a ‘make your own ant farm’ set a couple of summers ago. We attempted the ant one and found it very difficult. Making it was easy but they recommended you catch 50 ants. We managed 5 in about two hours and gave up in a tiz. As a result the wormery never got opened.

But now it’s dark and rainy and we need something to do, so worms it is. The problem is that B is now two years older and thinks worms are ‘icky’. I can’t get her to touch one. She’ll look at them and deigns to lift up plant pots to see if there are any underneath. She also won’t touch the earth for the wormery. This was clearly one of those challenges you need to be under 8 for!

She watches and provides commentary while I get some soil from the garden and layer it with different coloured sands. The instructions say to get fine soil – I do my best but frankly it ends up being garden muck with the stones plucked out. Hopefully the worms won’t mind! We find four big fat examples mainly by picking up the flower pots and seeing what’s underneath. We get some leaves and scrunch them up on the top of the wormery and then pop the worms in. Then we put the lid on. At first they climb around the surface but then they disappear into the earth.

To be honest that’s about it. I’m sure there’s ways of seeing wonderful worm activity in the earth but we didn’t notice them. We probably got the wrong worms but it was fun while it lasted. A week later we returned them to the garden and wished them a happy winter with lots of tunnelling.