Creepy Crawly INSECTS in a Log Pile.......

August 8th 2013   

(Unfortunately Alexandra lost her work whilst typing this blog and then felt rather disheartened, having already spent absolutely ages thinking of things to write!....  to help lift spirits once more, I typed a fair bit of this whilst encouraging Alexandra for input...  - OOOPs... next most important lesson for Alexandra - teach the 'save' button.... !  - from Alexandra's mummy! )

 

Creepy Crawly INSECTS in a Log Pile....... 

 Hi me again! Getting very dirty and being very brave. Today I have been looking in the logs.

Here are some of the logs. They were very old logs which had been in our garden for a long long time.  They are very rotten and have peeling bark and lots of fungus.

 Woodlice

I saw some woodlice. Can you see the baby ones in this photo? If you look very closely you will the word 'baby' written very small with some lines pointing to them.  The baby woodlice were really tiny. You could hardly see them. They had 14 legs, (7 legs on each side).  They were hiding under the bark as they like it to be damp and dark. They like eating the fallen leaves and our rotten wood.

Woodlice

A millipede

I found this millipede running around.  I didn't know if it was a millipede or a centipede.  I looked in my wild life book and learnt that millipedes have 2 pairs of legs in each segment, when the centipedes only have 1 pair.  My mummy helped me look closely and we could see 2 pairs of legs on him.

  

I like millipedes more than centipedes as millipedes eat dead leaves and things, but centipedes eat worms, spiders, woodlice and other insect.  I think I feel sorry for the other insects if they got eaten! I did find a very very fast long centipede which looked just like the photo in my book, but it moved so fast, it wouldn't stay still for a photo and was too good at hiding. I even picked one up and it managed to escape and run away.  

I will look again for another centipede.

Lace Webbed Spider - Amaurobius Fenestralis 

I peeled back some loose bark and found lots of these lace webbed spiders hiding underneath with nests of baby spiders!!  Just look at all the tiny babies, don't they look funny.  

 

 I looked in my book and learnt a lot about these spiders.  I found out that this type are found in the garden (I'm glad they don't come into my house) and like it under loose bark or on trees and walls. You can see that there is a lot of babies.  The mummy spins a nest and then lays up to 40 eggs in it, she looks after the eggs until they hatch and then cares for her babies. 

 

I found out the most awful thing about these spiders and I've decided that I no longer like the babies as when they grow bigger and just before they leave the nest they eat their mummy!!!  I think that is dreadful.  Poor mummy.  

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lace_webbed_spider   

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p005brzp 

 

 

 

A Grub

I am not sure what this is, it looks a bit like a caterpillar? Do you know what it is and what it will turn into? 

Birds Nest

The pile of logs I looked in was under an old oak tree, I was very surprised to also find a birds nest on the floor under the tree.  It had fallen of the tree.  I hope it fell after the baby birds had flown away and not before!  

I loved looking for all the creepy crawlies in the log pile.  I have learnt lots of things.  I wonder what I will discover tomorrow.  Looking for nature and writing my blog (with a little help from my mummy) is very exciting.