Facing my Fear

 

As the nights start drawing in and the seasons shift once more, my house seems to become the local Air B&B for many uninvited but (mostly) welcome guests. 

Over the 17 years I’ve lived here, a whole menagerie of creatures have chosen to call my house their home for the colder months. We have had shrews in our shoes, a pheasant called Brian in the bathroom, endless mice, a few rats in the roof and a partridge on the sofa… 

But there is one creature that I have had to work very hard to learn to live along side, and it’s probably one of the smallest of them all… or sometimes not, in this 1700’s cottage! 

They lurk in dark corners, I find them in the washing basket, in the bathroom, on the blooming stairs in the middle of the night, and once, I even found one in my bed… I am of course talking about our 8-legged arachnid friends, spiders! 

Now you might be wondering how on earth Dylan’s daughter is scared of anything, let alone something so small as a spider. I grew up with moths in the fridge (waiting for an ID), fish in a bath in the shed, pigeons in my bedroom and even snakes in the caravan we went on holiday in, and to tell you the truth, I don’t know why I am scared of spiders.

My dad would call me a “silly arse,” I’m sure, but I have noted that he rarely interacted with these creatures either!

I know that I am not alone in my fear of spiders, it’s estimated that around 6% of the population have severe arachnophobia, and there is some argument for this irrational fear being an evolutionary phenomenon. However, there is no proof that this is the case.

It’s obviously a question that has been puzzling other minds as well because in November 2021 a team of zoology researchers, led by Daniel Frynter at Charles University, Prague, carried out a study on why people seemed to have such a strong fear of spiders.

Their hypothesis was that the fear was indeed evolutionary, but what our brains were actually fearful of was a relative on the spider, which had similar traits but was much more deadly to people -  the scorpion. The researchers believed that our brains have learned to over generalise the shape, and movement of spiders and scorpions and register them both as the same “dangerous” animal.

That would make sense as scorpions are estimated to be responsible for around 2,600 human deaths every year… a fact I never thought I would need to know! Spiders on the other hand, rarely cause the death of people anywhere in the world… although I still don’t fancy spending time with venomous spiders!

They studied the reaction and disgust levels of over 300 participants, towards 62 different types of arthropods, (including spiders, scorpions, cockroaches and more) and they found that

“Spiders, scorpions, and other arachnids scored the highest in fear and disgust, while beetles and crabs scored the highest in beauty.”

You can read the research report here: Emotions triggered by live arthropods shed light on spider phobia November 2021

They also found that the bigger the bug, the more fear it seemed to elicit in people. I can verify that bigger spiders definitely cause me more distress!

The conclusion of the study was this:

“Based on these results, we hypothesize that the fear of spiders might be triggered by a generalized fear of chelicerates, with scorpions being the original stimulus that signals danger.” 

I am aware that I have gone off at a tangent here… I do that often!

Anyway, over the past couple of years I have been doing my best to overcome my own fear of spiders, and I very bravely joined a Facebook group called the British Spider Identification Group, which has changed the way I look at spiders forever. Here are some photos of a few of these incredible creatures that I have taken during this time.

Flower Crab Spider in my garden

Nursery Web Spider

European Garden Spider

Nuctena Umbratica (Walnut Orb- Weaver)  The same as the first image in this post

Tarantula at the zoo, not in my house! But I would not have been happy to take this photo before I started trying to overcome my fear. 

To start with the images of spiders would make me jump every time they appeared on my screen, but over time I have developed an excitement every time I see an image of a spider that I haven’t seen before. (Maybe its middle age?!)

Thanks to the spider group I’ve learned so much and I am so grateful for their knowledge and kindness and their sheer love of all thing’s arachnid.

Here are some fascinating things I’ve learned about spiders whilst trying to overcome my fear.

• The position of the eyes on a spider’s face varies between families of spider and can be used to identify the genus of spider. Not all spiders have 8 eyes, some have 6, 4 or 2 eyes.

• Despite having all those eyes, many web dwelling spiders can’t see very well but can see light and dark. They like to be in the dark and that’s why they sometimes run towards us instead of away, because they think we are a big shadow! Hunting spiders, like jumping spiders and wolf spiders have much sharper vision.

• Male spiders have their reproductive organs (pedipalps) on their face!! A fact I find absolutely fascinating. 

• We have over 650 species of spider in the UK. 

• If a spider is dehydrated you can see it in their abdomen, it becomes smaller, wrinkled or deflated. A cotton bud soaked in water and taped to the wall near the spider often encourages them to drink. 

• Because spiders molt their exoskeleton so that they can grow, they can also grow back missing legs! 

I hope that this blog post has piqued your interest in these 8-legged fascinating animals and not traumatised too many of you! 

I am still not 100% cured of my fear and I still couldn’t have a spider on me and remain calm but am I now able to see a beauty and fascinating in these tiny creatures. I can now pick them up in a glass and look closely at them before releasing them in the garden shed and I am quite proud of that.

 

Giant House Spider - My latest catch in my house!

PS: I’ve just realised that whilst I have been typing this post a spider has been on the ceiling right above my head, probably making sure that I don’t spread any more untruths about spiders!

 

Long-Bodied Cellar Spider keeping and eye on me!

 

 

Bugs, Bats and Big Tench

I am essentially, deep down, still the same little boy who couldn't get to sleep if I knew my dad was going to take me fishing tomorrow, the same little boy who woke up hours before the alarm was meant to sound and then couldn't get back to sleep because I was too excited about a day out with my old man. This is why I was awake at 02:30 on Sunday morning and sat back with three rods in the water by 4am. This did however give me the opportunity to play with dad's bat detector. I know nothing about bats but it was great fun listening to them and trying to follow them across the lake. 

Bats!

It was unusually busy this weekend along my favoured bank which meant that I had to fish a new area of the lake, I was in one of the deeper swims, which it turns out, is absolutely full of 1lb eels. I genuinely lost count of how many of them were caught, I'll be honest, they started to give me the hump once I'd re-rigged the rods for the umpteenth time because they'd twisted the rigs into clock springs. 

It wasn't all eels though, because my swim dropped off into 12ft of water right under my feet, I was able to play with the centrepin and float rod in the margin, I still caught a load of eels on it, but it also turned up a couple of tench and my first ever carp from the venue, albeit possibly the lake record for the smallest carp ever caught from there. 

Lucky

How that little carp has survived in there is a miracle, the sheer amount of cormorants, grebes, kingfishers, perch, eels and pike that are trying to eat it every day must stack the odds against it monumentally. if it survives to see adulthood, it needs to be called "Lucky".

Possibly the biggest tench I've managed this season at 7lb 8oz

I’ve started taking dad’s camera fishing with me now, teamed up with the 100-400 zoom lens which he used for most of his wildlife photography. I don’t understand the settings on the camera properly yet, but thankfully my mum is always on hand for some advice. The time flies by when you’re chasing dragon and damselflies around trying to catch them perched in the sunlight for long enough to sort the focus out and take a picture. I’m not sure of the id of these, there were many other species buzzing around with them, they just wouldn’t pose long enough for a picture!  

Lessons learned from this weeks adventure, I certainly wont be fishing worms in the deep water again. Those tiny eels are enough to drive a person mad. I shall return for another crack in a different swim this weekend. 

Tight lines,

Benno.

August Moths

As well as adventures down by the river, photographing beavers, August has also seen Evelyn and I turning the moth trap on to see what we could find in the garden.

I was really surprised at the different moths that were in the trap, just a few weeks after the last time.

Again, I will reiterate that my knowledge of moths is not a patch on my dad’s, but the more I empty the trap, the more starts to come back to me! If I have identified them wrongly, please do let me know.

Here are some photos of some of the beautiful moths we caught this time.

Burnished Brass

Poplar Hawk-Moth

Spectacle Moth

Orange Swift on my shoe!

And this is my best effort of a full list of what we caught.

Common Wainscot	20
Poplar Hawk-Moth	2
Emerald Moth	1
Burnished Brass Moth	1
European Corn Borer	1
Clay Triple Lines	1
Common Purple and Gold	1
Spectacle Moth	3
Willow Beauty	1
Heart and Dart Moth	4
Setaceous Hebrew Character	1
Mother of Pearl Moth	5
Owlet moth? (I think)	1
Dark Spectacle Moth	1
Common Quaker Moth	1
Common Rustic Moth	2
Silver Y	1
Orange Swift	1
Common Carpet Moth	1

As well as night flying moths, we have also had an influx of hummingbird hawk moths in the garden, and Evelyn has rescued a couple of them from her poly tunnel, where she grows all of her tomatoes.

She seems to have some sort of magic touch,  because after very gently catching them in her hands she lifts her top hand off, and instead of flying away, more than one hummingbird hawk moth and several butterflies have just sat in her hands for a rest, before fluttering away! I’ve never seen that happen before, but she is very pleased with herself.

Hummingbird Hawk Moth

And away!

Now the weather is slightly cooler, we are looking forward to turning on the trap once more to see what we can find in September. We will keep you posted.

No moths were harmed in the creation of this blog post! 

Messing about by the river

With the exceptionally hot weather of late, getting outside with the children during daylight hours has felt somewhat of an impossibility, none of us cope well in the heat! So, it was a welcome relief to be able to join our mum, (Julie), and Benno (in his air-conditioned van) last Thursday evening, to sit on the cool banks of the River Stour and see a creature that I have never seen in the wild before...

The main reason for this trip really relates back to my dad, as all of these escapades seem to in some way or another.

As you all know if you have been following this blog for a while, Dylan (my dad) was a really good wildlife photographer, and he took some incredible images of the birds and animals that he found on his wanders through the wild. Here are some examples of how good he was with a camera.

A few weeks before we discovered he was very unwell, he had taken it upon himself to drive all the way to Burgess Hill to buy himself an enormous Cannon EF 600mm 1:4L IS USM lens, as a 70th birthday/ Christmas present. It is almost the same size as me! He always intended to take it out when he was feeling better, but sadly that never happened.

In the last few weeks of his life, when Benno and I said that we would like to continue with this blog, dad was really keen for us to learn to use his camera with the lens and take it out to do some wildlife photography. So, that’s exactly what we did. 

On a very warm summers evening, the three of us drove to a location along the River Stour, I can’t tell you where it is, not because it’s top secret, but because I have no sense of direction! Benno drove, I looked out of the window.

Thankfully our mum, is also a brilliant photographer, so, after we had carried all of the equipment to the riverbank, she was able to show Ben how to set the camera up and use it.

I don’t think that there is much better subject matter to photograph on this river than beavers in the wild. I had never seen one in the wild and I have to say that I was not disappointed, they came so close to us, I was able to film them with my phone. They seemed completely unfazed that three humans and a giant camera lens were staring right at them.

Here are some of the first images that Benno was able to take with dad’s lens. I’m sure dad would have been proud of our efforts and would have probably laughed at Benno carting a lens and a giant tripod up and down the banks of the river! I definitely giggled more than once.

There will be plenty more photos taken with that lens, I’m sure. It was a really special way to spend an evening and to remember dad. I wonder where we will go next…

A change of tactics and a change of fortunes

It was around 04:15 on Sunday morning when I arrived at my chosen swim, the blackness of night just beginning to succumb to the inky blue of dawn on the eastern horizon. The forecast had it being a cooler, overcast day, which suited me just fine.

Perfection.

 A change of tactics was in order, just to see what could be learned, so the prawns had been swapped out for lobworms. I had previously tried to move away from the worms due to the fact that even with a half worm on the hook, it’s too easy for fish to pick up one end of the worm and swim off without the hook in their mouth, leaving me (the frustrated angler) to strike into nothing and spend the rest of the session wondering what I’m doing wrong. Prawns on the other hand are a perfect mouthful, the issues with them being that they’re very soft, so they can be pinched from the hook easily, and, the main one, they’re just not as attractive as lobworms. So, the solution? Chop the worms up as usual, then instead of using a half worm on the hook, use four or five small pieces of worm threaded on to the hook, topped off with a fake maggot to stop them being removed, and bingo, probably the best days fishing of my season so far. I have tried “worm kebabs” previously, where you put small sections of worms on a hair rig, but I had the same issue with fish tugging at the worms without the hook in their mouths. I distinctly remember dad having this exact same epiphany when he was fishing for eels in the past “put the bait on the hook”, simple when you think about it. 

The action was fairly intense from the get-go, I had landed three perch to 1lb and 3 tench to 6lb before 6:30am, then the eels switched on once it got properly light (not the way round it’s supposed to be), I ended up catching 5 eels between 1lb and 2lb 12oz, which is of course not a big eel, but the biggest one I’ve managed by design so far, and it put up a great fight on the 1.5lb barbel rods. God only knows what a 5lb fish would fight like… 

2lb 12oz, must do better with the photography next time.

2lb 6oz.

It was the first day it had been cool enough to wear the jumper again,
coincidence?

These two tench were both in the net at the same time,
my attempts at a "brace shot" were terrible, so singles it is.

All in all, a fabulous days fishing, everything I owned was completely covered in slime and my shed smells like a fishmongers. Can’t wait for next week now! 

Tight Lines,

Benno.

The early bird catches the… Eel?

As you may be able to guess from my lack of blog content recently, I have been struggling. Not only struggling to catch anything blog-worthy, but struggling in this weather, I am not cut out for hot weather, I think that’s why I love pike fishing so much, because it’s always done in the winter when you can add clothing to obtain the correct body temperature. Thankfully my big sister has been filled with the creative sparks required for blog posts lately, so thank you sis x 

My happy place. 

All that said, I have managed a few short sessions down at the syndicate, I decided to start fishing my perch/eel ledger tactics early to try and refine them before the autumn when they will really matter. The result has been a mixed bag, four eels which were all around 2lb, two perch, one of which was around 1lb and one was 8oz if I’m being generous, and of course, an obligatory 7lb tench. The major changes to the tactics for this season are the introduction of circle hooks and floating braid. The circle hooks should hopefully reduce any possibility of deep hooking the fish and the floating braid stays up off of the lake bed so there’s no line drag across the bottom adding resistance to the setup. When I came up with the floating braid plan, I hadn’t accounted for how much desire this line has to float, with the light swingers I use, it can overcome the weight of them and float up to the surface which makes it susceptible to the wind blowing it all over the place. Further research required. 

This fish had a big old frame on her, who knows what she would have gone in peak condition?

Prawns have been my main line of attack so far with this project, I have been reliably informed that if I can catch a 5lb eel, it can go on the honours board in the clubhouse, so that’s the target, I haven’t got myself organised or mentally prepared to be able to fish nights yet, so I realise that the chances of a really big eel are dramatically reduced, I do however get to the lake at 4am, so as the autumn days draw in, I will have a good few hours of darkness to have a go at them. There have been reports of some very big eels falling to the carp anglers baits, so I am definitely in the right place. The advantage of fishing prawns or worms is that everything that lives in that lake loves them, so it’s never certain what might be on the end when that swinger starts to rise, it could be a 12lb tench, a 4lb perch, an 8lb eel or a 50lb carp, all of which would be most welcome! 

There’s a big old snake in there somewhere with my name on it. 

Hopefully we will get some cooler weather and perhaps even some desperately needed rain soon, then my full motivation will return and I can go and get after it properly.

Tight lines,

Benno. 

          

 

Things that eat slugs in the night...

I’d like to begin this post by saying thank you so much to everyone who read my last bit of writing about The Nature of Grief. I’m so pleased that it struck a chord with so many of you, thank you for all of your kind comments.

Often I forget that I’m allowed to grieve for the loss of my dad, and I try to push through it all so that I can get things done, but nature always reminds me of him and it reminds me that I can slow down and just appreciate the calmness and slowness of the world around me. The fact that I’m surrounded by wildlife all the time really helps to ground me and bring me into the present.

Although sometimes being so immersed in so much wildlife can be a bit extreme. For example, the other night there was a frog sitting by the bathroom door when I got out of the shower! (I think it was waiting it’s turn.) And the alarming thing was that I didn’t even question why there was a frog in my house! I just scooped him up in a jug and had a chat with him whilst we walked back to the pond. This is what happens when you have grown up with Dylan as your dad!

The frog who was waiting outside the bathroom for me!

Now, onto the main reason for this post, the night time happenings in the garden…

I can often be found in my garden at night time, watching the bats circling the house, listening to the tawny owls and foxes that I’m lucky enough to have in and around the garden, and looking up at the moon and stars.

Full moon in Aquarius 29.07.26

Hummingbird hawk-moth

There is something about the night time in nature that brings me a huge sense of comfort. Lots of people I know are scared of the dark, but myself and my children revel in it. I have a lot of fond memories of being out in the wild at night with my dad, watching badgers, camping by fishing lakes, or maybe just walking back from the pub! And my own children love to go out for walks at night, even in the winter.

Our resident garden hedgehog

Over the last few very hot summer days, I’ve been outside at night a lot, and I’ve managed to encounter all sorts of creatures. My most favourite of all is definitely our resident garden hedgehog, who wanders around seemingly unbothered by my presence or my smartphone camera.

This hedgehog has been in my garden for a good few months and is doing an excellent job of keeping the slugs from eating my vegetables. It likes to wander between my garden and my neighbours’ garden, snuffling through the plants, looking for food, and it has been known to wander right up to my feet.

I know that I am extremely lucky to have such a special creature sharing my space and I try to do as much as I can to keep it happy and safe. I have a hedgehog house in the garden that my dad built, but so far it has remained empty apart from the hay that I have filled it with. I need to find a good location for it, and hopefully it will be put to good use in the winter.

I don’t really know much about hedgehogs, so if anyone out there would like to give me any advice, please feel free to do that. We have hedges running the full length of our garden, both sides, and access to water in a pond with shallow, sloping sides. The garden is full of slugs and insects and plenty of hiding places. If there is anything else I could do to keep this hedgehog happy, please do let me know.

There’s not much else to report at the moment, we are all recovering from a busy end to the academic year, and also my sons are playing so many gigs, we are a bit run off our feet. Thankfully the garden always provides us with space to relax and unwind day and night.

So for now I will leave you with the news that this blog has now had over 2 million hits. 2140240 to be precise. That’s over half a million since dad’s final post on Christmas Eve last year.
Benno and I are so proud of all his hard work on this blog, and we are aware of the huge responsibility that writing this blog puts on us. I hope we can do him justice; we will certainly do our best.

 Sarah