Sophie

On being a scientist….. Scientists see things, think, check in books, measure things, work in teams,then draw and write about what they discover… In one of my first years of teaching, I was assigned a class of twenty-six first and second grade students in an urban public school. We served a diverse community in the heart of Denver. My class was a rambunctious multi-age group--with more boys than girls. Classes stayed together for two years in a British Primary model, but this continuity had been interrupted by the departure of a teacher the previous spring. Because there had been a long term substitute, the classroom culture had unraveled a bit, and the start of the year had been rocky. One evening during those first weeks of school, I found a large house spider on my basement steps, put her into a small jar, and took her to school the following morning. At our morning meeting, I showed my students the little creature, soon named “Sophie,” after a character in one of our favorite books, Sophie’s Masterpiece, by Eileen Spinelli.. We decided that the students should research what she needed to survive and what we should include in a habitat/home. The children then set to work. We built a habitat for her using a 2 liter soda container and put a rock, a small branch, and a tiny square of wet sponge for moisture inside. The habitat was placed on the corner of my desk, and was often the center of attention during our ‘Choice Times’ when students could observe, draw and write about Sophie. It became a daily ritual for the students to catch small insects at recess that would become lunch for our spider friend. Thus began a journey of learning about spiders--and so many things in the natural world--that would change my classroom forever. Sophie lived in our classroom for several weeks. During that time, she spun a beautiful and intricate web, and in it suspended an egg sac. The children checked on her daily, read about spiders, drew spiders, and wrote books about spiders. Then, as suddenly as her arrival transformed our classroom, early in November, Sophie’s life cycle ended---and she died. The children were very sad--and insisted on keeping her habitat on the corner of my desk where they often peered inside as we lined up to go to lunch or out to recess. Weeks later, as we were lining up to go home on the last day before Thanksgiving break, students--again peering inside the habitat--discovered that Sophie’s egg sac had hatched, and her home was filled with dozens of the tiniest spiderlings. Sophie’s life cycle was complete, and her magic was new again in our classroom. Since that time, seashells, petrified wood, bark beetle twigs, wishing rocks, arrowheads, caterpillars, sea lion whiskers, wishbones, lightning stones, and ammonites have enriched and enlivened the morning meeting ritual in my many classrooms.. One morning, a black widow entranced us all! Such things inspire my students to think more deeply about science and the natural world in which we live. Natural curiosity about these things is followed by the desire to know more. Later in my teaching career, a science journaling project encouraged my students to document, through word and picture, their own interests in the natural world. Their experiments constantly amazed me—especially the level of thinking that went into the observations—from noticing the upside down reflection in a spoon to finding out that a boat can carry a heavier load if floating on salt water. There was no end to the discoveries made and the excited chatter that always followed… Using my science background and my own curiosity about the natural world, I constantly use science to enrich literacy and mathematical content---and to increase student engagement, of course! It has always played a key role in planning integrated units of study and as a springboard into so many content areas in the classroom. Years after Sophie made her way into my classroom, two boys who had been in that class arrived at my door on a Sunday afternoon in October with a large garden spider in a jar. They had found her in their garden and worried that she would freeze in the snow that was forecast for later that evening. In the following months, she became another visitor to my classroom--encouraging student curiosity and investigation. Jeannine West Paull was a K-5 classroom teacher for over twenty years and now works as a District Instructional Coach in Santa Fe, NM, supporting, training, and mentoring new teachers.

The Nature Table, an integral part of my teaching The nature table, placed close to a wall that is covered with display paper and an electrical outlet near the floor, has always been a significant area in my elementary and middle school classrooms. Why? Because a nature table helped me create and sustain the appropriate interesting classroom environment in which to build a student community of active, inquisitive learners. Because a well-displayed, interactive nature table appealed to my students’ sense of curiosity (and mine) and promoted interest, classroom discussion and team/individual research. What is a nature table? It’s a table space first owned by me, then maintained and co-owned by me and the class. It’s a table on which were displayed Mother Nature’s delights and mysteries from the first day of school on. The items (rocks, fossils, shells, feathers, bones, plants, whatever catches one’s eye) were artistically displayed, labeled, and accompanied with questions, pictures, reference books, magnifying glasses and a binocular microscope. From the first day of school, I started each the day with a nature table ritual. On Day One, first thing in the morning, I told everyone what’s on the nature table, inviting the students, at the appropriate time, to take a closer look at the things that I had found when out walking and collected in a tin. I then invited them, if they wished, to volunteer to look after the table. At the end of the day, I gathered my students around me they set off for home. I handed everyone a tin, with the challenge: “Hey, see what you can find outside your home……..something really cool that fits inside the tin. Bring it in tomorrow and show everyone.” I called the tins 'pocket museums' after a student said it was like having a museum in your pocket. It always worked! The next morning, students shared their treasures, and displayed them on the Nature Table. Once this routine was established, I ensured the table’s contents constantly changed, either by me or the students bringing in different interesting delights in their pocket museums. The nature table never failed to brighten up my classroom. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Nature Tables article

Following a long telephone conversation I had with a gentlemam who writes for the BBC, I received this aricle: How reviving nature tables could restore wonder to the classroom Chris Baraniuk How reviving nature tables could restore wonder to the classroom Credit: Maeve Birdsall / Co-op Academy Oakwood. This article has been published simultaneously with Inkcap Journal, a wonderful newsletter about nature and conservation in the UK. John Paull had a habit of collecting things he found when out walking. It was largely thanks to this that he set up his first nature table in a school, about 60 years ago. As a recently qualified teacher, he used to bring a little tin filled with finds to show his new class: shells, pine cones, feathers and so on. What a pupil later christened a “pocket museum”. He remembers the first time; how the children were transfixed by this seemingly humble offering. It was a secret collection, a box of treasure. What else was in there? They wanted to know more. “I was absolutely overcome by their reaction,” remembers Paull. “At the end of my day, I gave them all a little tin each and said, ‘Hey, tomorrow, bring something in’.” And they did. Paull laid out the children’s finds, from egg shells to leaves and coloured stones, on a table. “The atmosphere in the classroom fundamentally changed.” The children’s excitement was familiar to Paull. Nature has always delighted him. Even today, as I speak to him on the phone – he in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I in Belfast, Northern Ireland – he can’t help but enthuse about the hummingbirds flitting around outside his window. He marvels at the speed of their beating wings and the fact that they have flown more than a thousand miles on their migration from Central America. Watching them, he can’t contain a laugh of pleasure. “Just extraordinary little guys.” Paull considers himself lucky. That first school he worked in, during the mid-1960s, was in the village of Blaby in Leicestershire. The head teacher had given Paull free rein to plan his lessons however he saw fit, provided the children learned to read, write and do their arithmetic. From then on, Paull regularly incorporated nature tables into his teaching. Both he and his former wife Dorothy, who was also a teacher, promoted them and the wider inclusion of nature in the classroom. In a book recounting their experiences, called Yesterday I Found, Paull describes Dorothy’s classroom setup in detail – the maps strung from the painted brick walls, the shelves of small animals in cages, an insect house, terraria, many plants and equipment for dyeing fabrics. John Paull's nature tins, including wishing rocks with stripes of quartz. Credit: John Paull. By that point, nature tables had already been a feature of British schools for decades. However, as classroom prompts, they arguably had a heyday in the 60s, 70s and 80s. The School Nature Study journal asserted in 1960 that, “A well kept Nature Table may become the focal point of the classroom; the place to which children gravitate at odd times between classes, to look at and handle and discuss the things of interest.” Nature tables are still used in many schools, particularly those with a Steiner or Montessori ethos. But they have arguably fallen in popularity in recent decades, prompting calls to “bring back” nature tables to educational settings. Among those who question whether nature tables are still commonplace is the teenage activist and author Dara McAnulty. In Diary of a Young Naturalist, he mentions his mother’s fond memories of her own school’s nature table. “I wonder how many schools have a nature table these days,” he writes. “I know mine doesn't.” The author Emma Mitchell argues that health and safety concerns might have doomed nature tables in some schools. Hand-washing, protective clothing and adult supervision can all help to keep the practice of gathering and displaying things found in nature safe. As Mitchell says, “These little collections of finds were immensely inspiring to my budding interest in nature as I grew up in suburban Liverpool.” Paull suggests that the decline may be down to a modern-day distaste for hands-on learning; a new squeamishness in science education. He doesn’t blame teachers for this, more the new curricula and stringent targets. In his day, things were different: nature tables accommodated flowers, seeds and reference books alike, freeing children to follow their innate curiosity. Indeed, Paull might not have had the same enthusiasm for this style of learning were it not for his own experiences as a child. He grew up in a residential area of Penzance, Cornwall with “no gardens, no nothing”, he remembers. However, his dad, who was a bus driver, used to bring home little discoveries from his travels. A stone that was an unusual colour, for instance. The young Paull loved certain folklore associated with the natural world: ‘wishing rocks’ in particular. These are pebbles with a perfect stripe or belt of white quartz through them. Close your eyes, squeeze them in your hand, and you can make a wish or send a telepathic message – or so the story goes. Later, as a teacher, Paull realised that he could harness this magic and turn it into an opportunity to educate. When he retired in the 1990s, he moved across the Atlantic and set up an alternative teacher training programme in Denver, Colorado. According to a 2019 research paper charting his and Dorothy’s work, the programme was “designed to recreate the classroom teaching model of the 1960s” – specifically, the holistic approach to learning. Paull says he’s helped to train more than 450 teachers in total. The idea of bringing nature into schools now has high-level backing. The Dasgupta Review, an independent assessment of the economics of biodiversity that was published in February, argued that nature studies should be part of children’s education from “the earliest stages” right through to post-school settings such as college or university. Many teachers do still believe in nature tables, including Maeve Birdsall, assistant head at Co-op Academy Oakwood in Leeds. Six years ago, she was on a trip to Cornwall and, on the way, heard a radio broadcast discussing news of impending changes to the Oxford Junior Dictionary. The volume’s editors had decided to remove certain words associated with nature including “acorn”, “buttercup” and “conker”; in favour of “blog”, “chatroom” and similar terms. It caused uproar at the time. “I was completely outraged,” says Birdsall. “I couldn’t believe it that those words were being deleted.” When she returned from her trip, she told her colleagues and they soon decided to introduce a nature table at their school, which became a much more extensive installation. “It goes right along the whole of one wall,” says Birdsall, brimming. “There’s a bit where they can draw and paint and engage with natural objects.” The nature wall at the Co-op Academy Oakwood. Photograph: Maeve Birdsall / Co-op Academy Oakwood. Like Paull, she’s noticed a significant impact on her pupils. On one occasion, they became so intrigued by the structure of fungi that they launched what they called the What’s Inside? project, using magnifying glasses and microscopes to investigate the innards of all sorts of things, including fruit and veg. “They planned it all out themselves,” recalls Birdsall. She stops short of recommending that every school should have a nature table, acknowledging that each teacher has their own approach. But she does insist upon their myriad benefits, not only for education but in encouraging students to think about the planet. “We want them to be responsible citizens of the future, as well,” she says. Part of the battle is in enabling children, who sometimes live in deprived urban areas with very little picture-postcard countryside within reach, to have direct contact with nature. (There are efforts to address this, such as the Nature Friendly Schools initiative, which organises local field trips and nature walks for school children.) “If you read a lot of the books that are produced, they suggest you go in the garden and look at something,” notes Dr Sue Tunnicliffe, reader in science education at University College London. But she adds that large numbers of children in the UK don’t have access to a garden, or any green space near to their home. Idealised nature tables, adorned with birds’ nests blown from trees, kestrel feathers and mermaid’s purses might not be feasible. No big deal, says Paull. He, after all, had no garden at home when he was young. There are lots of places where nature finds can be made, he says. A patch of the school premises. The playground. The pavements. What’s more, those finds will be local to the children, making them more realistic and relevant. “Bring that stuff in,” urges Paull. Today’s nature tables can also be digital. The Commonwealth Association of Science, Technology and Mathematics Educators, of which Tunnicliffe is chair, has an Instagram account aimed at children and parents, through which her colleagues share photos and videos of natural objects and living things. Paull, who still organises workshops for children and teachers, also says technology is useful. It enables kids to find out facts about things that they’ve found or witnessed in nature: “I try to get kids to use those phones – you can’t ignore them,” he says. One example of an app that could help children learn about nature is BirdNET, which identifies which species of bird made a particular call or song. You simply make a quick recording on your smartphone and the app does the rest. Today, nature tables can accompany innovations such as this precisely because it’s hard to imagine a like-for-like replacement for traditional, hands-on learning with real items found in nature. And when I ask Paull if he thinks such a direct approach has the potential to inspire enthusiasm about all kinds of subjects, from science to literature, he wholeheartedly agrees. Nature is just a font from which everything else flows. “That was what nature tables were about,” he says, “building a learning community.” Thanks for reading this edition of The Nature Gatherer! Subscribe now to get these stories direct to your email inbox as soon as they are published. You can also follow @NatureGatherer on Twitter. Some links for you In the spirit of nature tables, have a look at The Countryman's post about an exhibition featuring finds foraged from nature. It includes artworks made using the finds and will be at the Craft Centre and Design Gallery Leeds until 25th September. If you think that plants deserve greater appreciation, this article in the Irish Times by Michael Viney could be for you. Viney discusses the idea of “plant blindness”, the idea that many people are unduly dismissive of plants. The term may not be perfect, as he notes, but there’s interesting food for thought here about how we can improve the public’s awareness of the native plants in their midst – and their beauty. A smiling woman caresses a flowering plant outdoors. We could probably all appreciate plants a little more. Credit: Gary Barnes from Pexels. I read a slightly disturbing story this week in High Country News, about people in the US who are targeting the Sonoran Desert toad for its secretions, which induce hallucinations in humans. “Oddly enough, the toad’s secretions have no documented historical use in tribes either in Mexico or the US. Yet practitioners are still marketing it as a traditional pan-Indigenous remedy,” reports Jessica Kutz. Another piece that delves into discussions about human appropriations of nature, though in a different way, was published by Outside magazine this week. Boyce Upholt's review of Emma Marris's new book Wild Souls is extremely thought-provoking on the question of what wildness is and how humans can best support it. The answer may not be what you expect. Last but not least, enjoy this marvellous report from BBC News about the sacred forest in Papua, Indonesia, which only women can enter. The ladies, who have noticed declining water quality in recent years due to marine pollution, socialise together and gather clams in the forest. “If a man even peeks in, he will be punished,” explains local villager Adriana Meraudje. Chris Baraniuk Chris Baraniuk I'm a freelance science journalist and nature-lover who wants to find new, hopeful ways to bring people and nature together. The Nature Gatherer Newsletter Join the newsletter to receive the latest updates in your inbox. Your email address Your email address Subscribe Contact Privacy RSS © 2021 The Nature Gatherer - Published with Ghost & Ubud

Crystal MacDougal

I don't know who reads this blog...........but I would so like to make contact with Crystal who was a member of my my teacher education program in 2005.

Can anyone help me contact her?

A very welcome visitor...............

 ..........came to my home in E;ldorado this morninmg............Teri Brogdon, from my teacher education program in 1999.

We sat and we talked anstalked...............Teri has just retired from creating and running a health education program!

Good for her............and, my goodness me, it was so good to see her!

I hope now we stay in touch through the computer..........thank you for coming, Teri!

Bird's nest inside our newspaper box.........next to the mailbox!

 

I MUST work more on my blog...................

And May is here,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

and the gardens, back and front, are looking beautiful................the trees have baby leaves and super blossoms! YEAH! 

March is coming.............

 

and I'm still forgetting to blog......darn it!

I had a really interesting article on keeping a nature notebook sent to me this week, written by a former student of mine in UCD's teacher ed. program

It's really, really good, and I have permission to share with anyone who might be interested.

Just let me know and I'll forward it to you.

Blogging - again.....................just remembered I have a blogging post!!

 

January 2021

Just remembered I have a blog.................which I'll try to remeber to use more frequently.......

Look in on Learning

 

Wow! Isn't the internet just great?

This morning I had an email from an adult who was a youngster in a classroom I visited in the mid 60s. The school, Melton Sherard, in Melton Mowbray, England, was in the forefront of developing mixed age/mixed ability primary school classrooms after the 11+ examination was ended by Stewart Mason, Leicestershire's Director of Education in the early 1960s.

Mary Brown, the school's most eloquent Head, had this film made about what was going on in her school.

I was invited, after one of the school's teachers attended one of my science workshops at Foxton Field Study Center which I set up when I became an Advisory Teacher to help him expand his curriculu,.

The film has just been added to YouTube.   https://youu8.be/TSHZYwqAOZY

Take a look - it's really good!

ANTS

 I’m 78, a retired educator and living an enforced life-style because of the Corvid 19 virus.

I live in New Mexico, in a beautiful area called Eldorado, about 8 miles south of Santa Fe.

. An enthusiastic amateur naturalistI, I go for a 2 mile walk every morning, just as the morning sun lights up the beautiful  but very dry countryside - we’ve had just one day of what I call WET rain in the past three months. When I walk, my eyes are everywhere, looking at the dried grasses, the cacti, the cholla, the lively lizards, the occasional bird , and I’m always checking on the numerous ant hills that are in the middle of the path.. 

Ants fascinate me and I stand and watch the mass of activity over and around each ant colony…………..ants searching for food to take back to the queen who’s overseeing her huge family of up to 50,000 offspring

 I used to know a lot about how ants live, how the newly impregnated Queen makes a home (usually around August ), lays eggs that hatch into male workers (known as SLAVE ants that make the nest much, mjuch bigger, search for food and feed the next batch of eggs that are winged males and females), then eggs that hatch into winged males and females. I know that ants don’t like ants from other colonies.

In fact, I wrote a book on Ants for teachers way back in the late 1960s. 

I know about the process of trophylaxis, the way in which ants communicate with each other, how winged males and females leave the nest late in the summer, mate in mid flight, and, thus start a new colony.

But, now, as I stand and watch them scurrying around outside the nest, I’m fascinated by their individual strength. I see individuals carrying food bigger than themselves in their mouths. I see them pushing stuff much bigger than they are. This morning, I saw two ants, working as a team pushing a big seed towards the nest. How do they know when to help each other? Trophylaxis? Some kind of body language that sends the signal "I NEED HELP?

Dunno.......

Occasionally, I see a single big black beetle hovering around the entrance to an ant colony. Do they feed off ants? Don't know the answer to that either.............but I'll see one morning the answer to my question.

When I became a science teacher......................

 1963 Thank you,Tiger!

My teacher wake-up call!

Long ago, in September, 1963, I started my first teaching job. I was appointed as a science teacher at Trinity Fields. The school, like

all secondary modern schools of the time, was for students aged between 11 and 15, all of whom had failed the national 11+

examination, and thus seen to be undeserving of an academic education.

The day before school started, I was given my teaching responsibilities. I was Form Teacher for 1C, which meant I took the register

for attendance, school lunch and for dismissal at the end of the day.

After taking my class to morning school assembly, I was to teach the bottom classes in each of the four years (1C, 2C, 3C and 4C).

The Head of the Science Department gave me the textbook, pointing out the science topics I was to cover.

“Not to worry,” he said. “When they take the Leaving Test at 15, only mathematics, reading and writing are tested.”

The following day I began my teaching career. Well, teaching is perhaps too grand a word. It would be more honest to say that I

began to be paid for standing daily in front of loads of bored adolescents, opening a well-thumbed science textbook - then, scribbling

science words on the blackboard to be copied into science notebooks.

My science-teaching pattern was straightforward. The kids came in, I welcomed them, they took their seats, opened their science

journals, and I read from the science textbook. I then wrote the key science information on the board and the pupils, using their best

handwriting, copied my notes into their science journals.

Nothing to it, really.

What follows is the description of one significant thing that happened during my first, very challenging year with Class 3C.

Thirteen year-old Tiger always sat alone at the back of the science lab. As he was always looking for trouble (and he was really good

at finding it), he was, to put it mildly, a pain in the ***. Tiger made my science lessons a joke. School didn’t interest him and science

didn’t engage him. His dad had told him that he’d have a job with him as a bricklayer on the building sites when he was 15, so why

should he ‘do his best’ in school? What was the point of it all?

My monthly science topics certainly didn’t interest Tiger. Well, to be honest, they didn’t interest me very much, either. When I read

from the science textbook, Tiger would roll his eyes, run his fingers through his greasy hair, scratch his head, and interfere with

anyone sitting close to him. His science notebook was filled with dirty pictures and rude scribbles.

Occasionally, on his really bad days, Tiger shouted that he was fed up with school and very fed up with boring science.

Nothing I did in my science lessons made any connection to Tiger’s life experience or appealed to his sense of curiosity. The science

I read from the textbook was irrelevant to his world – especially, I suppose, the way I presented it. To be honest, the science didn’t

interest anyone in the class.

Most of the boys and girls did, though, sit politely through each lesson. They spent their time scribbling and drawing in their science

writing books, often whispering to each other. The boys, though, waited for Tiger to stir the pot.

The days, weeks and months dragged by.

In the first week of spring thank goodness, the miracle of miracles happened - a big, BIG change for the better came over my

teaching. Tiger, of all people, believe it or not, and a small garden spider were my divine inspirations.

Walking back from shopping at the Coop for the weekend food, I spotted the most beautiful orb-web spider sitting in her intricate silky

web in the black currant bush outside the steps leading to my flat. Surprised to see one so early in the year, I fetched a jar, popped

her inside, and took her upstairs, and made a proper spider home for her.

The spider reminded me of when I was a kid when my dad and I found some garden spiders in the back of our house. I kept two orthree of them in a jar tucked under the bed – quickly learning that you don’t keep spiders together as they eat each other. Looking after the survivor was really fascinating, though. Keeping her safe and well fed with flies and moths made me feel good, especiallywhen she deposited an egg sac for me on her silky web.

I took the spider to school the following Monday, put her in a large bell jar with a little soil, some greenery, a branch, and a couple of

Autumn

 

Trying to download some photos I took near Abiquiu Lake this morning. Amazingly beautiful!

Blogging again...........

 

Good to be doing so.....................have to figure out now how to share my blog with friends.

My dad's brother, CAPTAIN William Paull

 

Just came across a photo taken in 1919....................my dad's brother, William. I was told he ran away from home (1913, I think) and became a cabin boy in the navy. 

He eventually became a CAPTAIN!!

My dad used to take me to visit him when he was home on leave - I so loved talking with him !

He was murdered by a drunken sailor................................

The weather in Eldorado...

 

I should have mentioned in the previous blog, we've done a lot to the driveway, including having 20 Pinion trees planted. Jeannine created a garden area at the back that includes three small greenhouses and has grown some beautiful flowers over the past couple of months.

Gardening is a full time job, though. We haven't had any rain for over three months and daily temperatures in the 90s. Although the countryside's bushes and trees are capable of surviving in such conditions, maintaining planted plants and trees is a full time job. Jeannine waters every day, morning and evening.!

Today, October 11th, a day-long extreme wind is taking down hundreds of  leaves from the big tree in the back garden.... Yep, autumn is here!

CRIKEY!!

 

October 12th 2020

Crikey - I've just remembered that I have a BLOG!! And, when I dug out the access code, I see that I haven't written anything for ages!!

Coronavirus time gives me time and opportunity..........but, oddly< I can't get motivated to write!

Well, I'm going to try again, so here goes:

First and foremost I'm well (well, cranky and tired and old), as is Jeannine and Bertie and Fifi.

Jeannine has been working daily on her computer, overseeing the teachers she mentors, observing their virtual links with their kids. After each 8 hour stint staring at her computer, she gardens, cooks and cleans house............and, needing a new project, is working on painting the space in which we hang our clothes.

Me? I dawdle, cuddle Bertie and Fifi, paint a bit, read the NYT, and go for a two mile walk every morning..........well, not every morning, but certainly 5 times a week. When I return, I have a cold drink and check my email, hoping there's something from one or more of my English friends, and then read the BBC news on my phone.

And I fret about Trump, his big mouth, his lies, and the fact that he has millions of followers. OMG!

Every day a tweet says something again which proves he never puts his brain in motion before he clicks away on his computer. Imaging having to work for me and carry out his damaging project ideas.

Roll on, election time. C'mon, America..get him out of the White House! PLEASE!!

OK, that's a start.................another blog later when I decide what I need to write about.

Oh, one thing. I was able to support an application for a new teaching post by one of my former Teacher Candidates, Catherine. AND, she got the job! Well done, Catherine.

Toodlepip,

John

Hello, Mother Nature, I have quesions for you....

Whenever I'm out and about, in the garden or on one of the numerous local nature trails, I'm always looking, always thinking, always curious, about what I see around me.

So, I thought it would be a good idea to write my questions down and send them to Mother Nature and see if she can answer them!!

Let's start with what I saw this morning in my garden:

.            There were several ants scurrying around looking for food to take back to their nest. Then I saw the MOST incredible things: two ants carrying a dead caterpillar, one at the head one at the tail! I'm always impressed with the strength of the ants. I often see them carrying food in their mouths that looks bigger than them, and I wonder about the strength of their neck muscles...........but I have NEVER seen teamwork before with one ant helping another!

My question, Mother Nature is: do ants pair up to carry heavy food, or, was one simply dragging the caterpillar and was joined by anoher ant.................? Did the ant who found the caterpillar yell out in ant language, "Hey, give me a hand, please!" And was the request heard by another another who rushed over and picked up the tail end of the caterpillar?

Oh, of course I didn't have my iphone in my pocket. I rushed indoors to get it so I could take a photograph, but when I returned to the garden, the ants had gone................hey, hey.

Well, reader, have you ever seen two or more ants working together??

.         Another question about ants.............I did write a book aboutg them way back in the 1960s, and thus did a lot of research........but, now that my brain is getting older, I've probably forgotten a lot.
The little white things ants carry in their mouths: are they insect eggs? Do ants ever eat anything when they are out and about, or do they take what they find back to the nest and then enjoy a family dinner?

It's June - pandemic and protest time........

As I was sitting and typing this morning, gazing through the window at the beautiful bright blue sky, I had a thought:

Wouldn't it be great to have a photo of myself standing by the tree that is lit up by the morning sun.......I could send it to friends in the UK.

OK, but what do I do about the birds, the ants, blackbeetles, grasshoppers that are out there in the tall grass? Oh, I know - I could send out Bertie and Fifi to kill the birds, and I could get some pepper spray and get rid of the insects...........then I coulkd stand in front of the tree and have my photo taken!!

YEAH!!