My Backyard

Accidental Spore Print SUCCESS!

April 25, 2023 by Jade Craven

Yesterday, I was putting the washing on the clothesline when I noticed a couple of small mushrooms nearby. I hadn’t done a spore print experiment in a while.

This is largely due to the many failures I’ve experienced. It is so demoralizing when I put a lot of effort into finding the fungi only for the spore print to fail.

I found some scratch paper that I’d bought for Glenn and put them on that. Then promptly forgot about them.

I returned after 8 hours and looked at the print. It is probably the best one I’ve ever done. Glenn is in love with it and thinks it looks like a galaxy. He is hoping to do ones of his own.

I see more spore print experiments in our near future.

Bugs In Suburbia

January 21, 2019 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

Recently, I went to Belmont to get some photos for my street photography blog. I love the suburbs of Highton and Belmont. Many of the areas I’ve lived in or walk around are close to the river and have much more interesting bugs than I get at my house in Corio. Of course, my garden is pretty crap there.

I was walking to the bus stop on Roslyn Road when I saw this on the path. It was a bunch of harlequin bugs, or dindymus versicolour, feasting on something that I couldn’t figure out. I thought it was cool… although it was less cool when I missed my bus!

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Interesting Invertebrates In Mums Garden

December 9, 2018 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

I did some weeding while at my parents recently. I weeded a patch that is a lot damper than the other areas of the garden and was able to find different bugs to what I normally saw.

Pie Dish Beetle

Random Moths In Corio

November 17, 2018 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

I was visiting my family recently at their old house. Before I got there, Seth found this and put it in a jar temporarily to show me. It is a red-lined geometrid. The markings under its wings were fascinating.

My house

I’ve had to step back from my research with every animal I find, but I still try to seek out ID’s when I can.

Below is Agrotis porphyricollis.

Aedia leucomelas

Ladybird Larval Casing Under A Microscope

June 12, 2018 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

Yesterday, I was visiting family to celebrate the end of the semester. Seth decided to test out the microscope, so I quickly went into the backyard to round up interesting things to look at. It was cool seeing what appeared to be cells in flower petals and a blade of grass.

Below are images that Seth took of the larval casing. He placed it under the microscope, focused and took the image. Not bad! It’s a $50 Aldi one so isn’t the most intuitive. I’m planning to experiment more with microscopy… although I can see that leading to more money being spent. It is pretty fun though!