I have a day off every other Friday, and today was my Friday off, but I'd agreed to work for Derbyshire Wildlife Trust today, assisting with a visiting school group of 3-5 year olds. I know I said in a previous post this week that I was trying to do something in addition to whatever I was doing in my working day for 30 Days Wild, but as this wasn't my regular day job I'm counting it, as I gave up my day off to do this!
We had three activities on rotation... bug hunting supervised by the school staff, a range of sensory activities and pond dipping, which is the activity I led in three half hour sessions with three groups of children.
Of course, I didn't take photos whilst we were dipping but we found a range of creatures... newt tadpoles, dragonfly and damselfly nymphs, caddisfly and alder fly larvae, diving beetle larvae, shrimps, midge larvae, water boatmen, pea cockles and this creature...
I took a few photos of this china mark moth caterpillar as I tidied up after the children had left. I usually find a few other these when dipping this pond, but this was the biggest one I've seen so far and the first one that had nibble my finger!
Did you get outdoors today?
