Formative wild life experience?

[STYRBJORN]

I'm sure this has been raised before, but I haven't seen anything since I joined, so I decided to put the question to newcomers. Is there any special moment that you recall as triggering your interest in wildlife, or have you always been interested? If there was a special moment, tell us about it!

In my case, my Damascene moment was when I was perhaps 7. I had read Wragge Morley's The Ant World and was investigating to see what species I could find in the garden when I had the fortune to see something that a lot of WABbers would envy me for. I watched a party of Formica sanguinea, the picnic party-pooper, making a slave raid on a nest of Acanthomyops niger, the common black lawn ant.

The raiders were in a rough column as they approached their target. I wish I could say that they were in file and column and marching in step but they weren't that well disciplined. As they neared the lawn ant nest, the slavers on the left and right sides split off and went around the nest in a classic pincer movement that would have brought approving nods from Clausewitz or Sun Tzu. When the black ants encountered the front of the main body of slavers, they rushed back into the nest spreading, as we now know, pheromonal messages. The workers all started dragging eggs and larvae out of the far side of the nest, where the slavers killed the workers and carried off the booty. The slavers then went into the nest and took as many of the eggs and larvae as they could, leaving the nest to die.

F. sanguinea, the Blood Red Slavemaker, is one of about 6 spp of ants that enslave other ants. Nature red in fang and sting indeed.

Ric

[maccyd82]

Good question! Nothin specific for me, but watching the Attenborough programs as a child were definitley an influence. One image particularly sticks in my mind and thats the killer wales running up the beaches to hunt the sealion cubs - was that Life on Earth? Anyway as a child it made me think "wooooow cooooool" and made me want to find out more.

[nightshade]

Cars were more unusual than wildlife, no TV, few houses, Farmers markets that they rode horse drawn vehicles to. Fields with huge hedges, streams, brooks with trout and grayling, Rabbits everywhere (chicken only at christmas) so we made bows and arrows, lived in the farmers fields and hedges, shot and ate rabbits cooked on campfires, made dams, fished for trout, collected birds eggs and most important learned to be quiet and watch.
We did not know the names of half that we saw but we did know how to see it, when the clever people missed what was under their noses. So in a long winded way, growing up with it.

[sunnydale]

I was always fascinated by insects when I was a young kid. I'd sit in the garden for hours just watching them scuttling about. I used to lift up the rocks on the rockery, just to see what was underneath!
I would search my Dad's veggie patch and remove slugs etc before he got the chance to chuck salt on them! And when he was digging, I'd 'rescue' worms before he chopped them in half with the spade!

I'm not sure that my life time interest was borne from those experiences, although they did bring pleasure to a rather difficult childhood.

Like maccy, watching David Attenborough on the TV was probably the biggest influence.
He was my hero.


Tracey

[Tangaroa]

Hi,

I was later than most when it came to appreciating wildlife. I always had a passing interest as a kid - but nothing serious. Funnily enough it was a trip to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji that made me appreciate British wildlife more. During that trip I got to swim with manta rays, watch sperm whales diving and orca's chasing dusky dolphins in the South Pacific Sea. Seeing and being amazed by all of this I realised I knew very little about wildlife in my own country.........

When I got back I decided to learn more - eventually I gave up my job in IT to volunteer full time with my local wildlife trust for 1 year. I later gained an MSc in Environmental management and I am now working for a rivers trust in Scotland......All though it has to be said I am still often overwhelmed by the vast amount of knowledge that people have about wildlife in this sector and i think I will probably always feel a bit like the new comer.

[yorkieuk]

Well my first real memory that I think could have triggered my facination with wildlife, was when I was about 7 or 8. Not 100% sure. I was trying to catch things in a lake next to my house with a small pond dipping net. I managed to catch what i now know to be a great crested newt, However, at the time I caught it I apprently thought I had caught a dragon and proceded to get my friends in the street to come and look at the dragon I had caught.

[Adam Cheeseman]

My earliest memories of wildlife hunting involved pond dipping for smooth newts and frogs in a pond at West End in Surrey and catching butterflies in the woods across from my home when I was a sprout.The trigger for my interest in birdwatching was when I bumped into two scoolmates outside their house looking at a male Chaffinch in a pine tree. That was nearly 28 years ago!

My first involvement with botany came one Christmas when my mum sent my sister and I across the road to pick some holly with berries on. This meant climbing a small tree to get to them. Next thing I knew I was laying on my back on the ground holding the top couple of feet of the tree that had snapped off.

Cheers,

Adam

[faz]

mine is simple a freisan cow when i was 5 ish give or take a year in the car on moterway never seen one before asked dad then i had a load of Q,S then i got hooked 41 years later im on wab still learning

[STYRBJORN]

Thanx pipple. Quite a variety there. Although it was seeing the slave raid that got my attention focussed, my first contact with wild life might have put me off for life! Wading in a little stream in Charnwood Forest and emerging with a 4" horse leech firmly attached to my ankle had a very high Yeuch factor. My dad proved that a glowing fag end up the bum really does persuade them to let go.

Ric