Outdoor Hour Challenge No. 23 - Moths

We actually completed this Outdoor Hour Challenge back on 21st September. However, you'll see below why it's taken me so long to post this.

We started this challenge with a brainstorming session about how moths were different to butterflies. Thanks to Barbs’ handy summary on the Handbook of Nature Study page we came up with:

1)      Moths come out at night (nocturnal) but butterflies are out in the daytime (diurnal)

2)      Moths’ wings lie flat down when they’re resting, but butterflies’ wings stand upright.

3)      Moths have interesting, feathery-looking antennae, whereas butterflies have plain, thin antennae.

4)      Moths have a fat body (abdomen) but butterflies have a thin body (abdomen).

5)      Moths form a cocoon, but butterflies form a chrysalis.

We used our Collins’ ‘Butterflies of Britain and Europe’ field guide to help observe all these differences.

We had a quick hunt for moths in our entry way between the front door and the main house, where they often hang out, and came across a dead one entangled in a spider’s web (oh, dear, I really must do some cleaning out there!). It wasn’t really in a good enough condition to be drawn, but then I remembered that last year we’d succesfully observed the metamorphosis of a White Ermine Moth, so Sophie (7) drew a picture of that for our nature diary.

And then, as luck would have it, Nathaniel (3) discovered a HUGE caterpillar calmly walking along the wall by our house:

We decided this could be the caterpillar of a Pine Hawk moth, noting its abdominal horn. The guide book said it liked to make its cocoon in the soil, so we filled a glass jar with some soil, put in a few bits of grass and twigs for good measure, and popped it in. Sure enough it immediately buried into the soil. A few days later I gave the soil a bit of a shake and there was the pupa. It twitched a bit as we moved the contents of the jar, which was interesting to notice.

And so we wait for the moth to hatch! And we waited….and waited….and waited…and two and a half months later it finally decided to make an appearance! It hatched out in the evening, so we let it dry its wings out overnight. It quickly found the stick that we’d put in the jar for that purpose and hung there.

The next day we released into the garden, taking a few pictures before leaving it on the tree. It was a sunny, warm day, so we hope the moth had time to find a good home for the winter.

As you can see, it was worth the wait!

Abide in Him!

Outdoor Hour Challenge No. 22

We're skipping ahead a bit on the Outdoor Hour Challenges from the Handbook of Nature Study blog, partly because I wanted to spend the whole term focussing on Insects and other Invertebrates rather than trying to finish Garden Flowers.

The first challenge in this series was to do with Butterflies, which is a great place to start. After talking a little about the different stages of life a butterfly goes through (egg, larva/caterpillar, pupa/chrysalis and then adult butterfly) we headed out to the park to look primarily for butterflies but also for any other insects we might come across.

We saw three types of butterflies, took pictures and then tried to work out what they were when we got home.

This one we decided was a Small Copper

This one looks like a Small White

This one we think was a Common Blue. It looked really blue when it was flying about, but it was hard to get a photo to show that. When it was at rest on a leaf we could only see the underside of its wings. Still, they were quite pretty too.

Eventually we got a photo with its wings spread out.

When we got home, Sophie also copied out a picture of a butterfly and labelled all the different parts of its body to put in our nature diary.

Below is one of the photos I took this summer when we were on holiday in Luxembourg. We spent the afternoon at a butterfly garden. It was a magical place! As soon as you walked in there were giant butterflies, all different colours and species, flying about all around you. The children loved it, and still talk about it.

Some of the butterflies were huge - you can tell by the size of the orange slices on the plate.

We learnt lots about the life cycle of the butterfly, and it was amazing to see all the different chrysalises that had been collected and hung up in the incubator by the staff team.

Back to our nature walk last week, whilst we were in the park we came across a few ants and bugs, including this interesting brown beetle, which Charis found. We popped it into our bug jar and took it home to draw it and identify it, but we couldn't work out what it was. We wondered if it might be some kind of Chafer, but it wasn't at all hairy. Answers on a postcard please!

Abide in Him!

Outdoor Hour Challenge No. 14

Our pressed flowers

We've struggled a little to keep up with our nature study challenges while we've been back in the UK. I know British people moan a lot about the weather, but it REALLY has been particularly awful this year. I think officially it's been the wettest April - June period on record, and as I write this there is heavy rain and floods all over the country (I'm also wearing my fur-lined Russian boots today and considering putting the heating on - and it's JULY!) Consequently we've not been able to get outside as much as we would have liked.

Anyway, we did go ahead and make the flower press as Barb suggested in the Outdoor Hour Challenge No. 14. We walked around the garden with Grandma, and Sophie chose 8 different flowers from the plants growing there. We placed them in the flower press and wrote down the names that Grandma told us.

Unfortunately, it's been too wet to sit outside and sketch any of the garden flowers. I think we might have to abandon the Challenge for now and resume once we're back in Russia in August.

Although they're not garden flower seeds, Sophie did plant a little cress seed box, and has been so involved with watering them every day that she even had to phone the Grandparents up to remind them to do it when we were away!

The mixed flowers seeds we planted

The pansies we planted from seed

We're only on Challenge No. 14, but I am really enjoying these challenges and am already seeing results. Whenever we're out and about the girls have such keen eyes and point out all sorts of things - slugs, snails, bugs, pretty flowers. The Grandparents commented on how observant they were, and Hubbie immediately replied that I had trained them that way, which I felt really chuffed about. I sometimes wonder if Sophie is a little too observant - she's made a habit out of spotting rubber bands on the pavement that the postman has thrown away and we now have rather a large collection 'rescued elastic bands' in our house!

Abide in Him!

Nature Study at the Beach

As you might know, if you're a regular reader of my blog, we're working our way through the nature study challenges over at the Handbook of Nature Study Blog. Back in April, we were having a very wet and windy time here in England. It turned out to be the wettest April ever, in fact, since records began in 1910! After one particularly stormy Friday night, our family decided to head down to the beach. We were amazed at what we found! There were so many interesting things that had been washed up onto the beach by the storm!

I couldn't find an Outdoor Challenge that related to beach study, but I thought I'd include the photos we took of our findings.

Firstly, Sophie and I counted 15 different types of seaweed!

                             

We also found several crabs and hermit crabs, as well as cuttle fish:

There were many different kinds of shells:

Other finds were the wing of a poor seagull, and some dead fish.

We took a lot of our treasures home, laid them out on kitchen towel to have a better look, and then Sophie, Charis and I sketched one of the crabs for our nature diary. We then had to throw all our treasures out pronto since the smell in the house was becoming rather unpleasant!

Abide in Him!

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