whats your..

[odonata]

earliest memory of wildlife? As a teacher I wonder how many of the children I work with will remember their experiences pond dipping or bug hunting.
My earliest memory was when I was 5 or 6, playing in a pub garden in north London and finding a stag beetle- i can remember it like yesterday!

[Wild-Woman]

Originally Posted by odonata

earliest memory of wildlife? As a teacher I wonder how many of the children I work with will remember their experiences pond dipping or bug hunting.
My earliest memory was when I was 5 or 6, playing in a pub garden in north London and finding a stag beetle- i can remember it like yesterday!

Fishing for tiddlers with my brother at a local brook where we used to live. I was never a dollies and pram girl-couldn't see the point, they weren't real. I also used to spend hours in the garden, in dirt, turn over pots and things to see what was under them.
My grandad, bless him, had a set of books called the pictorial knowledge and I can also remember being allowed to sit and look through these books. I can distinctly recall the black and white images of the dinosaurs and fossils within those priceless pages. Then an old aunty, a schoolteacher at the time, gave me a thin book about animals and birds, that to monochrome and everything sort of stemmed from there.
When I was about 10ish I suppose I can remember being allowed to watch the amazing underwater world of Jacques Costeau and it just reinforced my love of all things natural.
Sadly, I didn't live in an area where careers mattered. You just had to get a job and earn so I was not encouraged to explore the possibilities of further training and prospects in this sphere.

But it all came good many,many years later. I'm in a school, running an environment club, teaching what I know and have recently landed a field teaching job. So really everything wild got locked up until about 10 years ago and now wildlife is my passion and I try to pass that on.

Julie

[smartie]

Wild flowers, lapwings and Water Voles in a large field across the road from our house. I used to watch the lapwings displaying for hours from my bedroom window, and come home from playing around the stream with mud everywhere and leeches attached to my socks.

My early "knowledge" of wild flowers came from the Cicely Mary Barker books of flower fairies, which my aunt bought me when I was about 8 years old. I used to bring bluebells home from the fields (knew no better then ) and insisted on having them kept for days, drooping and stinking, in a vase in the living room.

[lewisa]

Originally Posted by Wild-Woman

Fishing for tiddlers

Oh the memories I used to do that, in the stream that fed a disused mill lodge (which is now a car park).

Earliest was probably poking spawn and chasing frogs in a meadow at the end of our back garden.

And worms, squeming when my older brother teased me by throwing them at me.

[honeybee]

I'm not sure of my first memory but an early one is of having a tank of frog spawn in the kitchen..watching it develop into tadpoles and then the little froglets used to escape everywhere till we released them.

[Garden Carpet]

My earliest nature memory is of my mother trying to capture a lizard to show me. I was five.. and she caught it by its tail.. which was left wriggling in her hand while the rest of the poor creature ran for cover.

Next would be finding stiklebacks in a stream.. taking them home and being sent back out to put them back where I found them
jaki

PS In later life I discovered that my mother is afraid of all sorts of beasties.. including spiders and lizards but she never ever let on while we were children. For that Mum, I am eternaly grateful.

[honeybee]

Originally Posted by Garden Carpet

My earliest nature memory is of my mother trying to capture a lizard to show me. I was five.. and she caught it by its tail.. which was left wriggling in her hand while the rest of the poor creature ran for cover.

Next would be finding stiklebacks in a stream.. taking them home and being sent back out to put them back where I found them
jaki

PS In later life I discovered that my mother is afraid of all sorts of beasties.. including spiders and lizards but she never ever let on while we were children. For that Mum, I am eternaly grateful.

That's really nice that she didn't pass her fear on to you and braved the creppies and crawlies.

[odonata]

these are really lovely stories, thanks for sharing them- it's great fun reading them and also reassuring that perhaps one day some of the kids I teach might remember their early experiences of catching worms and leeches when they're older.
I think a neighbour of mine had a pictorial knowledge book when I was little, I used to go round and look at it, shame they don't make them like that now!
You reminded me too, of a fish book that dad used to let me look at too. And my grandad used to have a small field at the back of his house that had damson trees in it. I used to come up from london and spend the summer stuffing my face!

Smartie- I have a great image of leech covered socks eewww!

Keep the stories coming!

[badgerwatcher]

Hiding in the michaelmas daisies, (which were taller than me,) when I was about three, and finding spiders' nests, little cottonwool-balls of spiders eggs, and keeping one in a jar. The tiny spiders hatched out and ran everywhere! I've loved spiders ever since!

[nightshade]

Building dams in a stream,finding sticklebacks and millersthumbs, martins nesting in a sandbank and a bird (dipper)walking along a stony bottom underwater!
Rookeries and sparrows by the hundreds,caterpillars walking the pavements,swifts, swallows and martins in a perpetualy blue sky, working horses, bullet beetles coming into the house along with moths.Roach being watched by jack-pike in gin clear patches of canal
(untouched by canaltrusts as yet) no litter no-one had anything to throw away

[philbyuk]

probably when i was playing in some woods (i was about 5) with a stream running through the midddle and seeing my first dragonfly larva..(well i thought it was an alien.lol) then sat watching damselflies and dragonflies, and being mesmorized by the whirlygigs in the stream..later on when i went fishing and seeing bats and the dawn chorus...happy days (maybe i should return to the woods if its still there..or would that kill the charm/memories?

[Dan Salter]

Playing war in my friends back garden with all the other kids while all the parents were indoors yakking....
I wanted the best gun so i went shuffling around under a line of conifers at the back of the garden for a stick to shoot the enemy that were shooting at me pow pow pow....saw my perfect gun stick ! grabbed it and spun to shoot back only my stick went all wobbly and dangly and kept sticking its tongue out at me....panic !!...yes my first Slow Worm ! ran indoors in shear fright and the parents came out to see the "Massive snake" i had found !

[philbyuk]

Originally Posted by Dan Salter

Playing war in my friends back garden with all the other kids
!

great days and now the politically correct have takin that away!!!!

[Susie]

Originally Posted by Wild-Woman

I was never a dollies and pram girl-couldn't see the point, they weren't real. I also used to spend hours in the garden, in dirt, turn over pots and things to see what was under them.
.....

Julie

Ditto.

I don't know if it counts as a wildlife memory but my earliest memory of nature was being dragged across a barren windswept Welsh hillside when I was very small (two, maybe three years old) and it was covered with dead sheep in various states of decomposition. I found them fascinating.

Moving on from that I think the next one was playing with woodlice (the ones that rolled up into a ball) and after that the nature memories come thick and fast. Frog spawn, birds nests, wild flowers, my pet slug I kept in a box under my bed ...

Once we moved the compost heap and found a mouse nest, including babies in it. We left it alone and after a while Mrs Mouse came and carried each baby away to safety.

[Wild-Woman]

Originally Posted by Susie

Ditto.

I don't know if it counts as a wildlife memory but my earliest memory of nature was being dragged across a barren windswept Welsh hillside when I was very small (two, maybe three years old) and it was covered with dead sheep in various states of decomposition. I found them fascinating.

Moving on from that I think the next one was playing with woodlice (the ones that rolled up into a ball) and after that the nature memories come thick and fast. Frog spawn, birds nests, wild flowers, my pet slug I kept in a box under my bed ...

Once we moved the compost heap and found a mouse nest, including babies in it. We left it alone and after a while Mrs Mouse came and carried each baby away to safety.

I can see it now. The WAB Book of Childhood Memories of Nature.

I'd buy it! Stu.........................................

[badgerwatcher]

Quote Susie: 'I don't know if it counts as a wildlife memory but my earliest memory of nature was being dragged across a barren windswept Welsh hillside when I was very small (two, maybe three years old) and it was covered with dead sheep in various states of decomposition. I found them fascinating.'
You can't get much more wildlife than on a barren windswept Welsh hillside! Lol
I've always been fascinated by that sort of thing too, but told I was disgusting for it. It's not death that fascinates me, it's the process of changing to another state, and I like skulls and bones.
When my boys were small, I used to go to great lengths to stop the butcher chopping up the oxtail for our dinner, and cook it whole, coiled around inside a big pan, so that we could fit it together again afterwards and see how it worked. Likewise chicken neck bones. And I used to make pig's head brawn, and find the skull really interesting. People have always said I was weird!

[henrya]

Earliest memory must be the London pigeons that flew around the houses when we lived in Mortlake. There was one of that red and white colour that we called 'Ginger'. I would have been three then, as we moved to Camberwell that year.

henrya

[Susie]

Originally Posted by badgerwatcher

Quote Susie: 'I don't know if it counts as a wildlife memory but my earliest memory of nature was being dragged across a barren windswept Welsh hillside when I was very small (two, maybe three years old) and it was covered with dead sheep in various states of decomposition. I found them fascinating.'
You can't get much more wildlife than on a barren windswept Welsh hillside! Lol
I've always been fascinated by that sort of thing too, but told I was disgusting for it. It's not death that fascinates me, it's the process of changing to another state, and I like skulls and bones.
When my boys were small, I used to go to great lengths to stop the butcher chopping up the oxtail for our dinner, and cook it whole, coiled around inside a big pan, so that we could fit it together again afterwards and see how it worked. Likewise chicken neck bones. And I used to make pig's head brawn, and find the skull really interesting. People have always said I was weird!

It is nice to know that I am not the only one, Badgerwatcher.

Another memory I have is at primary school some nasty little boy thought it great fun to bring in a chicken's foot and chase the girls with it. It made them scream when he pulled the tendon and made the claw curl!

It didn't have the desired effect when he tried it on me though - I took it off him and kept it. It was the first time I had seen how feet "work". lmao

[Owl-Light]

Originally Posted by Wild-Woman

...I was never a dollies and pram girl-couldn't see the point, they weren't real. I also used to spend hours in the garden, in dirt, turn over pots and things to see what was under them...
Julie

Yup, I can ditto Susie's "Ditto" too there Julie

My clearest early wildlife memories were in Africa. Not sure if it the Leopard in the tree in our garden or the Black Mamba on the drive. Both dramatic events in the household so they left an impression.

[MazH]

Finding caterpillars and keeping them in jars, hoping they'd turn into butterflies and feeding them on leaves.....collecting ladybirds with different numbers of spots from the hedges at Primary school..... gathering acorns from the oak tree in our back garden and letting the wood pigeons have them in the winter or watching squirrels bury them....I've tried to do things like that with my kids but they never seemed that interested, though I bet when they have their own, they'll be doing the same!

[Susie]

Originally Posted by Owl-Light

Yup, I can ditto Susie's "Ditto" too there Julie

My clearest early wildlife memories were in Africa. Not sure if it the Leopard in the tree in our garden or the Black Mamba on the drive. Both dramatic events in the household so they left an impression.

I think that deserves a WOW!

I wonder if I was the only one who got chickens eggs from the fridge, made a nest for them and waited for them to hatch ....

[nightshade]

My boys always liked a dancing chicken (boned i.e ribcage removed),and fish/squid dissections

[honeybee]

You yukky lot

Actually I used to love disecting cockles and other sea molluscs (dead ofcourse) and find all their insides fascinating and tell my mum she was gross for eating them because all their poop's inside!

[Jane_Russell]

I remember a lorry with day old chicks arriving at our house. I must have been about 2 years old because we left that house before I was three.

Jane

[Alan]

Originally Posted by Susie

Another memory I have is at primary school some nasty little boy thought it great fun to bring in a chicken's foot and chase the girls with it. It made them scream when he pulled the tendon and made the claw curl!

Lol.. that could easily have been me Susie!

Rabbits paws worked well too (not very lucky for Rabbit though), my uncle used to give me them! Especially when mam would 'accidentally' find them in my pockets thinking she grabbed a mouse.. hehee

I also did the caterpillar collecting in them big sweet jars. Furry Garden Tigers where best. Remember thinking "how do they do all that poo!"