The spring insect challenges: We test ants’ taste buds; explore spiders and webs and chase butterflies.
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.
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