Childhood Collections! (1 Viewer)

[Gill Osborne]

Just been reading a post from Geraldine in which she describes collecting spiders and taking them to school for the nature table.
It got me wondering if any, or HOW MANY(!!!), Bird Forum members had collections when they were young?
I used to collect caterpillars in jars to watch them change into a chrysalis and then the adult moth or butterfly...which was usually the only time I actually found out what I had!!! Much to my mother's dismay I would have loads of jars lined up on top of the bookcases in my bedroom!The best one I ever found was the GIANT caterpillar of the Elephant Hawk-Moth...I've been looking for another one each and every summer since!!!
I also, when I was about fifteen, had a 2ft fishtank in which I watched frogspawn develop into tadpoles and then froglets.
One thing I always wanted to do,but never got around to,was setting up a tank for Three-spined Sticklebacks...their breeding behaviour fascinated me when I read about it in Konrad Lorenz's book "King Solomon's Ring"......perhaps that can be my project for Spring 2004!!!!
I also collected the usual stuff like skulls, owl pellets etc, etc but unfortunately my mother threw all of these away when I moved into my own flat...and before I could pack them all up in boxes and take them away....that really p'd me off!!!

 

[Karl J]

Hi Gill - I can only remember doing it one summer but I collected caterpillars to watch them change into chrysalis & butterflies like you. I had quite a set-up actually : a cardboard box with a layer of soil out of the garden, and some hedge cuttings pushed into that for them to live on. And over the whole thing I had some clear plastic - so they wouldn't fly away before I had chance to see them.

Can't remember what sort they were although I know they weren't whites, but I can remember the hedges were full of the caterpillars.

 

[Geraldine]

Hi Gill,
My father had Sticklebacks in a tank for some years. I don't remember much about them, I was very small.
I collected everything: caterpillars, spider's nests, bird's egg shells, feathers, leaf skeletons, autumn leaves, pressed flowers, bones, stones, shells, bird's nests, bits of dead butterfly wings, my dog's baby teeth. My bedroom must have been a terrible health hazard!
When I had children of my own, I did things like boiling an ox-tail until the meat came off, then washing the bones and showing my sons how they all fitted together. And taking cutters to a hawthorn bush to remove an obsolete wasp nest we found, so we could take it home and examine it.