Do you remember .....?

[Ann2]

Do you remember when/how you first became interested in wildlife?

I was lucky enough to have been brought up in the countryside and my parents were always keen to teach me the names of various birds and plants etc. but it was the thrill of seeing my first seal in Wales about four years ago that really prompted me to pick up a camera again and go in search of everything wild.

Ann

[rlchew]

Ah Ann, it was so long ago and my memory is not what it was ....

Actually, I do vaguely remember being given the "Observer Book of British Birds" and becoming a member of the Young Ornithologists Club (the junior wing of the RSPB .... I am not sure if it still exists). I also had a pair of binoculars at a young age and once I got a bike (and later a car!), there was no stopping me .

I have been interested in birds since a young age and I guess mammals too. However, I have to say that since joining WAB, my interest in wildlife has significantly broadened due to the knowledge, experience and photos of all the brilliant members here .

Richard

[Kayleigh]

My mum has always fed the birds so it was only natural for me to do the same. There was farmland near where I lived and with a group of friends used to go where there was a pond in a field that's where I saw my firs newt and frog spawn. I also used to catch sticklebacks in the local brook.

[Garden Carpet]

At the tender age of 10 I formed a birdwatching club... one friend and me! I used to draw the bird from the inside of the observer book of birds.. and name all the parts etc... couldnt do it now to save my life!!

My parents always showed us kids bits of nature. Mum even tried to show me a lizard when I was about 6.. it ran across the path and she grabbed it and the poor thing offloaded its tail to escape.. ma was left with a wriggling tail in her hand. I only recently (I'm now 54) discovered she was terrified of such creatures, spiders included. Brave Mum!!!

Like Richew, WAB has brought my interest to the fore again and I have learnt so much since joining last year. I found WAB while trying to id some moths.
jaki

[Ollie]

Well I was born on a farm so was introduced to animals at a young age. This was when practically all farms had sheep, cows and horses and of course the sheep dogs as well. Guess my interest in wildlife grew from this as I have been a keen nature lover for as long as I can remember. I must say though that I have learnt so much more from WAB in my time as a member.
Roger

[jennyb]

During my whole childhood, my parents used to take us kids out into the countryside every weekend. I think I must have absorbed so much from them during those trips.

Just this week I noticed some celandines in my garden. I thought to myself "How did I know they were celandines?". The answer is that my parents must have taught me. I know I did not learn at school or from a book - I just knew they were celandines.

I have a lot to thank my parents for

I now realise that the more you look at wildlife, the more you see!

Jenny

[Wild Times]

Out for a walk today I pointed out the celandines to my children.
My 6 yr old started making up a song about the most beautiful plant in the world, Celandines .

I remember when I was 4 being allowed to explore the woods at the end of our street. My only instruction was not to pick the Plants with white flowers (hogweed) or any that looked like them, as they might be poisonous. by the time I was 14 I knew a whole array of posionous plants (and eddible ones too) When I was asked at 16 what I wanted to do I already knew I wanted to work in wildlife conservation.

[Kymba]

I was lucky enough to grow up in the Country. My back garden was a large wood where i spent every free moment behind that was a large lake that always attracted an array of birds and this was surrounded by large fields, ( what a playground we had ).
I was always comming home with injured animals and birds (drove my parents mad,they knew RSPCAand RSPB off by heart). I use to spend the spring looking for Birds nests and then monitoring them daily to stop others taking and smashing the eggs, then enjoying watching the chicks hatch and grow.
That passion and love is the inspiration that has made me want to open my centre so other children can have the same joys as i did

[svenrufus]

For me, I had the typical young kids interest in fluffy animals, then joined the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust kids militia, so for all his faults, Gerald Durrell gave an outlet for a natural inclination. I seem to recall I adopted a rare snail on its breeding programme, but can't recall what it was, I wonder how it is doing.

Then David Attenborough, the swine, presented Life on Earth, cemented the passion, and condemned me to a life of low paid jobs in the conservation sector. Could kiss him for it though, what a life, getting paid for counting flowers. Nice.

[Lords and Ladies]

Interesting thread. I'd have to entirely blame my father who worked in the natural history department at sheffield city museum.

This meant that I'd be taken out on fungi spotting trips, small mammal surveys with longworth traps and similar excursions, all at an age when I didn't really appreciate it as much as I could have.

What I did appreciate was getting to look after some of the various things that were brought into the museum, either escaped pets or hitchhikers found in imported fruit and veg (once they'd been verified as safe of course). So dad coming home with a cardboard box with holes in it was always fun . Usually snakes and lizards as there was a very definite line drawn above spiders by my mother. She put up with a lot but there was a limit.

The other part was seeing behind the scenes at his work. If I spent the day there as a kid I could wander around essentially unsupervised. Looking through the backroom stores of pinned exotic insects, hugh trays of collected birds eggs and all the stuffed animals that weren't on show at that moment. Some of the rooms were really piled from floor to ceiling with exotic stuffed animals, like a taxidermist's nightmare with spare glass eyes rolling around on the floor.. Couple that with the various mummified Egyptian bodyparts in store and it was really a little boys dream.

I was very, very lucky to have receptive parents for this sort of thing. My dad had a small greenhouse but it did have inbuilt concrete ponds for exotic amphibians and the windows were netted over so I could grow oleander to feed and breed oleander hawk moths. Some of the coldframes doubled as vivariums and the pond had great crested newts and, for a while, axolotles not really recommended.

So a great deal is down to parents to plant that interest. My interest did wane for a long time as some people have said, with education and jobs etc., but it's come back in recent years. It's only fairly recently I've become more interested in plants and more interested in native wildlife.