I may be weird, but I love mini beasts

[KurriKurri]

I always have. All kinds of insects and spiders, I saw a crab spider the other day - it fell off a bramble and was sitting on my cardigan waving it's little claws second row down first left, don't click if you don't like spiders.
They can change their colour to match their background, - how cool can you get?

I was just looking it up for identification and when I saw that chart, I thought how lucky we are to have such a variety of beautiful creatures we can see in this country. And that's just the spiders, don't get me going on moths - I love moths - so many kinds from tiny to big furry ones - all that soft downy fur and the colours are incredible, moths are my favourite animals.

I know I sound like an over enthusiastic eight year old , but I'm just constantly amazed by these beautiful creatures.

Anyone else a bug fan? (or am I just slightly bonkers?)

MyCarHasBrokenDownAgain , I always wanted a Giant African Land Snail! Saw an article in "Woman" or "Womans Own" in a GP's surgery when I was about 11, but my Mom vetoed it
But now I am a grown up, I could do this!

I did have a few stick insects in a tank once, aged about 9, my Mom threw them out as she thought they were dead. They were being sticks!!!

Grimma, am with you all the way, Lillies are my favourite flowers, lily beetles are not welcome.

Wonder if MN would have a Mini-Beasts topic???

Lizzy, Hello (( )) xx

Hunting for crabs is my favouritest ever pastime (I blame coming from the centre of Britain, farthest away from sea).
I am also the only one in my family of 3 males and me that will pick up crabs!
I used to do the whole crab fishing via line, but far prefer hunting under rocks etc.

Grimma I used to have some in a tub when I was a kid - snail races ahoy - bit like cars though, they were the 1.1L starters, I soon wanted the 6L V8*

*Although never actually achieved that with my cars LOL

GALSs are great pets! I used to to go Brixton market and 'rescue' them from the pot! They were quite rare as a pet when I started, I used to have a Geocities (I know!) site years ago, it was one of the only pet snail sites on the web at the time. I do miss them actually ... had quite a few different species at one time too ...

YANBU. As a child I could never walk past an earthworm stranded in the middle of a pavement without moving it to a nice bit of earth. Even now I love the squishy feel of a big worm wriggling across my hand.

My personal favourites are woodlice. I used to keep many as pets when I was a kid. I love the ones that roll up into a ball.

Spiders are evil though

Hunting for crabs is my favouritest ever pastime (I blame coming from the centre of Britain, farthest away from sea). I am also the only one in my family of 3 males and me that will pick up crabs!

I have such a bastard sense of humour, this just made me laugh (think about it ...!) Sorry for lowering the tone!

I snurked too.

I don't mind spiders but I absolutely HATE moths, they scare me to death! I have to get my husband to get rid of them if they are in our bedroom or bathroom, the other day there was a massive moth in the ensuite, it was literally the size of a bird or something. I was in tears over it. Slightly mad I know.

Dirty Gerties

YANBU at all!!

I have an insect phobia (if they touch me or I think they're going to touch me) yet I still find them absolutely fascinating. The turning point for me was building a pond in the garden - I became absolutely entranced by the world I found there - partly I think because it feels safe, as I can study it at very close quarters but they can't jump on me! When we bought our house and had to fill in the pond we'd built in our rented place, we were so gutted that all the little critters would die that the first thing we did (while the house was being rewired) was build a pond, then I bought dozens of 10L buckets and we hired a van... several trips later and we had moved the whole pond 35 miles south west. Our sparkies thought we were stark staring mad going to all that trouble for a load of tadpoles, dragon/damselfly nymphs etc, yet every spare moment we'd find them sitting out by the pond drinking their tea and gazing into the depths, and by the time they'd rewired the house they'd caught the pond-fever and went off to plan their own.

Many hours we spend with our arses in the air and our noses down to the water, gazing into the depths/shallows - you can lose yourself for ages watching the great herds of daphnia (water fleas) roaming across the Serengeti sun-warmed water and the big scary nymphs, and the numerous frogs, etc etc.

I blog about it, amongst other nature stuff - here are the shots I waited a year to get of our dragonfly nymphs metamorphosing, if you're interested.

Lots of minibeasts here too.

I love minibeasts too

My favourites are zebra spiders and ants. We feed the ants drops of golden syrup and watch them gathering round in circles to drink it up. I love to see them marching along carrying stuff.

My DS was in Reception until last week. They did a whole 'mini-beasts' thing for 2 weeks and I loved it as much as he did. We had to do drawings, google them, go on a hunt in the garden etc. Great fun!

A big moth flew into my kitchen the other day, DH thought it was a bat! He is scared of them so I picked it up and it didn't want to leave my hand :-)

I love mini beasts too! I spend my whole childhood digging up mums garden to find them. I also love pond dipping!

NonAstemia Beautiful photos!

Some of mine can be found here:

Bugs

Click on the individual pics for biggie!

Fantastic photos NonAstemia and MyCar , - I shall have a good read of your blog NonAstemia - it looks great.

I'm very impressed that you transported a pond - true dedication!

Thanks Kurri It was a bit unusual but totally worth it!

Beautiful pictures MyCar!

To me YABVVU! I just don't "do" bugs at all. But at the same time I won't kill them or have anyone else kill them, they have a right to live and get on with their bug business.

I am lucky enough to have a job where I take school children bug hunting and pond dipping. I have to admit that this year it has been less 'cool' doing it day after day in the pouring rain but mostly I love taking kids bug hunting.

Oh I can't wait until my dc are old enough to appreciate pond dipping rather than puddle splashing. The wardens at our local nature reserve run mini beast exploration safaris that include pond dipping. I am thinking of volunteering to lay new footpaths/cut reeds/whatever just in the hope that I can go along on one of them sometime.....

Brilliant photos, NonAstemia and MyCar.

Thanks Sariska

In the spring when the pond gets full of blanket weed we spend hours with a bucket of water going through each bit of weed with eagle eyes looking for the tiny little beasties hiding in there. They say to leave it at the edge of the pond but when it's out of the water it's too heavy for them to crawl out of so we pull each strand apart looking for the nymphs and swishing them into the bucket before squeezing out the weed. I'm willing to do that for them yet if I inadvertently touch one my uncontrollable reaction is to scream and catapult the poor creature into the grass. I then have to look for it and try to return it to the pond. [bonkers emoticon]

Mini beasts are great

I bred moths and caterpillars as a child and have never really grown out of it so much so that I ran "Bug Club" at DS1 school - we hunted beasts, identified them, made habitats - great fun and today I've been rockpooling

DS1 loves mini beasts too, he made me dig a large pond in our meadow to encourage mini beasts.

I keep bees now which is grown up mini beasts

I still move earthworms off footpaths if I'm able to. If there's loads I don't, but if there's a stray one and the sun is out, I feel badly for it.

Not a huge spider fan but if one needs removing, I do catch and release. I can't imagine killing the things.

I adore tiny toads and frogs.