Hey Blog! This week I’ve decided to tell you about some of my lessons.

I learn humanities with Humanatees. This is a tutoring business, and some of the subjects it teaches include geography, mythology, history and philosophy. The business is called Humanatees because “humanity” sounds a lot like “(Hu)manatee” (A manatee is a large marine mammal, sometimes called a Dugong or Sea Cow). Originally, it was an in-person business, but at the start of the pandemic the lessons went online. I have never met in person with Jake, the teacher, as I started in spring 2020.

The online lessons at the start of the pandemic were my first with Humanatees. There were four in a week: Modern history, Ancient history, Geography and Mythology. After these free lessons finished, I took the six-week courses. I took the KS2 courses first, and then the KS3 ones, which have an assessment. This is a set of questions about whatever we have been studying, mostly easy but with one ten-point question at the end which is always best to allow 30 minutes for…  I have always chosen to do the assessment, and it seems I’m actually pretty good at is, as I usually get a very high score. After each class I try to complete a “response” to it as further study, such as pictures, a piece of writing, or even just a some research and a discussion. These responses have included working out the power generated by wind turbines, discussing the French revolution in French, and doing some beautiful drawings of fairies, which I have reproduced here:

The most recent courses I’ve completed are Revolutions, about six revolutions through history – the American, French, Russian, Cuban, Iranian, and Arab Spring – and Energy. This second was a study of renewable and non-renewable sources of energy, from the fossil fuels to wind and solar; but from the geography side rather than science. Alongside this course, I have been watching videos from an amazing YouTube channel called Theatre of Science. The link is here: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheatreofScience. The videos we have been watching are from the latest series, all about energy. These are more on the science side, talking about where energy comes from and how we access it. We have sent in the assessments for both Revolutions and Energy this week, and I am hoping to get another high mark.

It would be great if Humanatees could do a course on either ‘wildlife habitat’ or ‘historical transitions’, as I would really like to do both of these topics.

Hey Blog! Last Sunday was one of the most exciting days in my life so far: I was actually able to hold a bird! This was all at a bird-ringing session. Last month I turned 12, and it happened that there was a bird-ringing session on my birthday. We booked it, but unfortunately it was cancelled because of the high winds. However, it was able to be rescheduled, and last Sunday was the day for it.

Birds are marvels of nature. When the dinosaurs died out, they left descendants behind: birds! These modified-dinosaur, feather-winged, size- shape- and colour-varying creatures are an entire class (Avies, from the Latin word for bird) of their own, under the phylum Chordata. Birds have amazed humans for centuries, and still continue to do so – me included!

There are a few things to check before you ring and release a bird. These are species, age, wing length, weight, sex, and ring number.

• Species is the easiest, and comes first, as all the others depend on it. We had blue tits, a great tit, a goldfinch, a wren, and two long-tailed tits. Unfortunately, all these species require different methods for working out the other information!
• Wing length is pretty easy, you just have to hold the bird up against a ruler, and read the answer.
• With sex, you might be able to tell by its plumage, but otherwise it’s a bit harder – you might need to judge by brightness of the feathers and the weight for example.
• Age is the most difficult. For blue tits, you check the colour on the primary coverts, but most of the others required a whole-bird-lookover. In the nest, they concentrate on getting their wing feathers grown, and only at their first moult change their body feathers. By looking at the quality of the body feathers you can tell whether they are a second+ year bird, or only a first-year.
• It turns out that there is actually a good use for old camera film canisters (Get your grandparents to explain “film” to you!) and that is to put birds in to weigh them! With a set of mini scales, you can pop a bird in one of these tubes and find their weight. Most small garden birds are around the 10 – 15 gram mark, with wrens being more like eight grams.
• Ring number depends on the size of the bird’s leg, and whichever one you pull off the string it comes on. This ring is important because it is like an ID card for a bird, if you can imagine the avian equivalent of a something that weighs as much as a mobile phone and is permanently attached to your leg!

Holding the birds was the best part of it. It was so cute to feel their breathing and heartbeat beneath your fingers. It could be called kind of “emotional”! You had to hold their neck with your first two fingers and form a gentle cage with your hand. Here is a picture of me holding a blue tit:

At the end of the session we went to see the mist nets used to trap the birds. They are just like mist: hardly visible. If you didn’t know they were there, you’d probably walk straight into them! Fifteen minutes later, after the end of the session, we could see a small something flapping in the net, so the next group obviously had one bird at least to ring!

Hey Blog! This week being the middle week in March, I’ve decided to write about finding signs of spring this week!

On Sunday it was Watch Group. This month we were out by a very deep pond, hanging over the edge of a platform and dipping nets in the water. The reason? We were looking for frog- and toad-spawn, and few other small water-creatures. I’ve already talked about dipping for invertebrates in “Full stream ahead” two weeks ago, but frogs and toads are new. Every spring, amphibians travel out from their winter hiding places, and go to the ponds. There, or even on the way there, they link up with a member of the opposite sex, to mate with as soon as they get to the pond. The female then lays her spawn, which will eventually become tadpoles; and they either stay in the pond until autumn, or travel around the area, until they go back to their winter hiding places. “Amphibian” actually means “has two lives” denoting the land life, and the water life. Most amphibians only spend the spring and some of the summer in ponds, apart from the ones that overwinter on the bottom.

Currently our family are taking part in a “toad patrol”, where we go out in the evening and look on the roads around us for toads and frogs, which we take back and put down next to the pond. If you want to get involved, go here: https://www.froglife.org/what-we-do/toads-on-roads/tormap/ , to find your nearest group. Through them, you can find your nearest toad patrol. However, if you are a prince, I advise not taking part, just in case a witch has transfigured herself into a toad and is planning to turn you into a frog…

At the same session, we heard our first Chiff-chaff of the year. It’s super recognisable, as it repeats its name over and over again. Now we’re hearing them everywhere. The House-martins and Swallows haven’t arrived though, but the Redwings and Fieldfares are leaving. Flowers such as daffodils, snowdrops, and crocuses are fully out, as are a few Hawthorn leaves, but no one knows ‘weather’ to expect a splash or a soak, as the ash and the oak are not yet out. Birds are pairing up, and the blackbirds are taking nesting material into the hedge out the front, so a brood of young is to be expected. We heard a Skylark singing when we went on a walk this morning, and birds usually sing when they are defending their territory, or seeking for a mate, so Skylarks are busy too! Everything seems to be springing into life, and soon it will be sprung!

Hey Blog! This week I’ve done some cooking.

Cooking is fun. You get a lot of satisfaction from turning a whole load of ingredients into a delicious dish, and it isn’t too hard. Anyone who has a cooker, an oven, pots and pans, and some food, can do cooking, or even baking. Here is the cooking I’ve done this week.

On Tuesday I went to Scouts. I’ve talked about Scouts before, but this time was a cooking session. The troops in the district are all sending one team from each troop to take part in a “Ready, steady, cook” competition this year, so Tuesday was the first stage of the competition to get in the main event. We had planned in advance, on zoom, but this was the real cooking.

We decided to make our starter. This was planned to be fried halloumi with sweet chilli sauce, with cucumber for decoration. I had practised making it at home to go with dinner that night (homemade tortillas with veg, halloumi, and the sweet chilli sauce) and it was delicious, but one of the ingredients is sugar, and something very interesting happens when you cook sugar for too long (interesting if you’re a toffee apple, that is…) – yep, we overcooked it at Scouts, and it turned into ‘Scout style’ Sweet Chilli Toffee. Chilli chocolate is wonderful, but no one’s ever marketed chilli toffee – hmmm, I wonder why?!

The halloumi was excellent, except for the first few seconds when we didn’t have oil in the pan, and it began to burn and stick. But that was soon solved, albeit by borrowing someone else’s oil, and with some heating up of the sauce just before we served it, it was just soft enough for the judges to eat, and spicy enough to set their mouths on fire! We did not win the competition (that went to the team cooking a dish of bangers and mash) but we all had fun, and we all did well. Good luck to the winners who are going on to represent our troop!

I have also done some baking this week. Over the winter we have developed a liking for “Daddy gü pots”, homemade gü pots made with shortbread, chocolate, cream, rum-soaked raisins, and a sprinkle of cinnamon, baked in the oven or the microwave, and served hot or cold (I prefer hot). We had cream, rum, raisins, cinnamon, and chocolate, but no shortbread, so I decided to bake some to make gü pots with. We used the simple 321 shortbread way, with 3 of flour, 2 of butter, and 1 of sugar.  You can use any amount for a unit, just so long as you keep the ratio the same. These are really tasty, and served well in the gü pots. I always feel that homemade food is nicer, most likely because you put love and time in it, and it is given to someone that cares for the love and time.

Anyone can decide to do some cooking or baking, and if you care about what you are making, the food will taste even better! Have fun, and I hope you make something YUM!

Hey Blog! Yesterday we went to the stream in a local wood to test the water quality and check for some cool creatures with the Eco Group!

The person leading the session was the manager of the hostel in the wood. She hired out to us a fire pit for my birthday party last week, my first party, for my twelfth birthday. When we got there, the first thing we did was go straight from the campsite where our base and campfire was to the stream, to check for aquatic invertebrates. Animals like mayflies and dragonflies spend most of their lives as nymphs in streams and ponds, before one day climbing out of the water, moulting, and becoming their adult form. Certain animals can be used as a water health rating, showing how healthy the stream they live in is. Leeches and water worms can live almost anywhere, so their rating is quite low, but caddis flies and beetles are much higher, as they require more specific conditions. My team found two mayfly nymphs and a beetle larva, denoting the stream was quite clean. Another group found caddis fly larvae, which are super-cool because they build cases out of stones and sticks from the river bed. The process for finding all these animals was: Insert a net into the water about a foot downstream of where you want to sample, then gently kick the streambed where the sample should be. Wait thirty seconds, then withdraw the net and empty into a plastic tray that has been filled with the stream/pond water. Check your sample for critters.

We also did water testing. There were two ways we did it. The first was with a disk with different grades of black and white on it and the second was with a PH strip. I could see the second faintest on the colour disk, and PH was approximately 7. All in all, the stream was very healthy!

We then went back to the fire pit for lunch. I had bought a bag of marshmallows on the way, so we toasted these for lunch pudding. There were also hot chocolates, so everybody was happy. After this we went back down to the stream to measure its width and depth. Here is a picture of me and one of my friends measuring the width of the stream. We found it varied a lot, but then there were rocks in the middle, as seen by the photo. You can also measure speed, by dividing distance by time, like this:  Speed = distance travelled ÷ time taken to travel.

You can measure many streams like this, and it would be rather fun to do so. The most exciting part, though, was finding out what creatures the stream is holding in its depth!

Picture credits: my friends’ mums

Hey Blog! You won’t believe what happened this week.

It all started on Wednesday evening when Dad put Kids Invent Stuff on the telly through his phone. I had sent in an invention about a month ago, but we had never received an email telling us I’d won. However, after a few seconds, I realised I had!!!

Kids Invent Stuff is a YouTube channel where the presenters build some utterly CRAZY kids’ invention ideas – you send in an invention and they choose one to build. Anyone aged 4 to 11 can enter an invention, so here is the link: https://kidsinventstuff.com/submit-your-invention/. Every month there is an invention challenge, and at the end they decide which one to make. Previous inventions include a custard-firing superhero suit, a motorised survival zorb, a jellybean-pooping rainbow unicorn, and a princess tower-trap escaping crossbow-powered zip line.

My Kids Invent Stuff invention was a human-sized bird feeder that has perches to sit on, and a hamper inside to put food in. I thought of this some time ago as an invention to use for having a picnic. We like having picnics in the summer but sometimes finding a place to sit is a little bit tricky, so with the human feeder you just need a tree to hang it up in.

When Kids Invent Stuff made my invention, the biggest difference was that instead of a picnic hamper, they used the human equivalent of bird food: pick ’n’ mix sweets! They also painted the human feeder purple and added cushions to the seats. These ideas are super especially if you were going to hang it permanently in a park. Here is the link to watch the Kids Invent Stuff video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHRPT-LtP-4

Other things I have invented include a new rocket fuel, and I have an idea for a robot that clears up after your dog, but neither is probably quite as successful as my human feeder.

One day, I would like to build my own human feeder. I’d probably have a compartment for a picnic hamper so that we could have cheese, pickles, sandwiches and cake (and rum punch, for the grown-ups of course), and I would include several bags of sweets, too. It would be awesome if I could invite Ruth and Shawn the engineers from Kids Invent Stuff to help me test it out.

Hey Blog! I’ve decided to write about trees this week.

Trees are really cool. The wood they are made of can be used in thousands of ways. They take carbon in from the air, helping fight climate change. They have been proved to boost mental wellbeing. Millions of stories surround millions of trees. Let’s take a look at these awesome, helpful, tiny-to-giant plants.

Last Friday, I went on a volunteer day in a privately owned wood, the one where I found the Violet Ground Beetle. There, the old Forestry Commission pines (seen in the forest pic from last week) are gradually being cut down, and native hardwoods being planted. We were chopping branches off fallen trees and clearing the area. There you could really feel how the woods are fresh, and grow. I really recommend getting out in the woods this week (that’s if the wind drops, as I don’t want people writing in with complaints!) to feel the trees and breathe the air.

Last Sunday was Watch Group. This is a wildlife group, run by the Wildlife Trusts, and last session was all about trees. The normal way to identify trees is by using their leaves, but in winter, there are no leaves, just bare twigs and buds. So to ID them, you need to know a little more. Ash has black buds and green-grey bark, so that’s easy enough. Holly is evergreen, so has spiky leaves all year round, so is even easier. Elder and Hawthorn have red buds, but the later has thorns, making for a more accurate identification. To find out more about them, get a Woodland trust winter tree ID sheet, here: https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2020/03/tree-id-kids/. Another activity was “Find the age of a tree” by measuring the distance around its trunk and dividing by a certain number. This number depends on the species of tree. The other was “Find ‘your’ tree” (put a blindfold on, get someone to take you to a tree, then feel it, the walk away, spin around a few times, and take the blindfold off. Can you find ‘your’ tree?) and the ones we didn’t do because it was so wet were Bark Rubbing and Drawing a Winter Tree. Hopefully we will be able to do these another time.

Trees don’t only help with practical things. In almost every culture different trees have different spirits, properties and meanings. Some British trees have this too, for example Holly stands for lightness, and protection, meaning it’s the obvious choice for Harry Potter’s wand. His enemy, however, has a wand of Yew, a dark and deadly wood. Birch has powers of fertility, and Aspen, the leaves of which we use as a metaphor of fear, actually represents bravery, as it (along with Hawthorn, a Faerie tree) stood at the gateway of the underworld. If you want to find out more, go to https://www.thehazeltree.co.uk  and look for British trees. Using the information I found on here, I created a flow diagram to find out what tree would be best for your wand, depending on yours and the tree’s properties and personalities. My wood, according to the quiz, is Rowan, so I went up the hill and cut a branch of Rowan. I fashioned this into a wand, and it looks like this:

I hope people find the beauty and life of the woodland trees. It will mean we can save these crucial plants alive for generations to come.

Hey Blog! This week I have chosen to write about my photos, and the art of photography.

Photos are a way of seeing things long after they have happened, to show what people look like, capture a perfect moment, or to demonstrate your skill in the art of photography. Cameras have changed and become smaller over the years, allowing them to be carried more places. The most important change, however, has been digital photography, making hundreds of snaps possible. Now, we don’t even need to take the pictures at all, as trail cams can sense movement and take pictures on their own.

I started taking pictures when we got a little pink camera on a visit to the UK (we lived somewhere else then). We still have the camera, and it usually takes decent enough pictures, but not superb. Up till now all pictures on this blog have been taken either by it or a phone. This began my photographic journey, but it was not until I did a photo course last year that I took some good photos. Recently I have got back into photographing things, as the real kick-off was watching the mice, voles and shrews out the window. They were the perfect distance for a close shot, so we got the tripod and a very old black camera out. It is this camera with which I have taken all the photos for this week. Wildlife can be tricky to photograph, and quite often it moves, so most of these are things that can’t run away…

These are the photos I have chosen for this week’s post.

The one top left is a Violet Ground Beetle. These large beetles are common and nocturnal, and both larvae and adult eat smaller insects. The one top right is a tree trunk end with a type of bracket fungus growing on it; the one bottom left is a view of the woods, and the final one (bottom right) is bluebell shoots coming out of the ground. The big one below is one of the three wood mice we have in our garden. These wood mice are quite cute when their little heads poke out of the holes!

A few days ago we bought a make-it-yourself nature trail camera kit. This one only works in daylight, but is good all the same. The only good picture from this camera yet is at the bottom. It took a while to set up, and we had to try different types of housing for it, but it should be going well now. The company we bought it from is called “Pimoroni” and the website is: https://shop.pimoroni.com . I hope to have many visitors to the food pile in front of the camera, and if I get anything really interesting or exiting, I will be sure to share it with you.

What is the future of photography? Now we have movement-activated trail cameras, finish-line watchers, home security cams, and many others, we can still be pleased to have a hand-taken shot, of family, nature, or many other things; it’s still satisfying to hear the click of the camera.

Hey Blog! This week I’m writing about something many young people across the world have joined in over the last 115 years. It is, of course, Scouts!

I joined Scouting as a Cub Scout in 2018, with the 1^st Belper Cub Pack, later becoming a member of the 1^st Belper Scout Troop, in October 2020. Scouting is thought of as a family by some, for it is a way to get to know many people. My Scout leader met his wife at Scouts, for example.

Scouting is a youth organisation, with more than 31 million members, spread across 216 countries. It was started in 1907 by Lord Baden-Powell, and has spread and grown: of the 12 people who walked on the moon, 11 were Scouts, and there are now six sections in the association. Anyone can become involved, as a leader or participant. When you are “invested”, you make the Scout promise, and then you’re in. You are usually put in a “Patrol” which is a small group of scouts, who are the ones you get to know most, and do activities with.

Scout meetings are usually once a week, and take place at the HQ, or Scout Hut. My troop has a game at the beginning, then two or three activities, which the patrols change around in turn. Some weeks the activities are craft, some teamwork, some practical skills. When we go to the county outdoor site there are sometimes “wide games”, games played by many participants on a large field. Quite often we go on a hike from the Hut, most times (like this last week) with an activity on the way.

During the pandemic we did virtual meetings on Zoom, and a couple of virtual camps. I had done a two night tent camp and a one night bunkhouse camp during my time in Cubs, and in Scouts I have done two home camps in our tent. We woke up to a hard frost all over the tent one time, and were quite glad to come back in in the morning! The most exciting thing I have done with Scouts so far is caving in early December. I mentioned this in “Review of the year: 2021”, but did not explain fully. The cave is an old lead mine above Matlock Bath, called Devonshire Cavern. It is mostly large enough to stand upright, and there was only one point where we had to squeeze through. The whole experience was enough to say, “I’m going to do this again!” Another part of Scouting is the badges that you can get for the activities. The ultimate award you can get in Scouts is the Chief Scouts gold award, which is only obtained with all the challenge awards. I hope to get it during my time in Scouts.

I hope that I continue to belong to the Scout family in the future. We have camps, experiences and trips planned, and many more outings in idea form. The activities are awesome, and I hope every member likes it as much as I do.

Hey Blog! As today is the first day of the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch weekend, I thought I’d take part, and share the results from this with you.

The Big Garden Birdwatch is the biggest citizen science survey about nature, with one million participants last year, and is quick, fun, and easy to do. You don’t even need to have a garden, just an hour to do it in, a green space to go to, some paper, an ID sheet (or know the birds already) and your eyes. Upload the results to the RSPB at https://rspb.org.uk/get-involved/activities/birdwatch/, and also find games, a quiz, bird lists, and many more bird-related activities. Started in 1979 by the RSPB, my Mum has taken part in many Big Garden Birdwatches, including the first one. Oops, perhaps I shouldn’t have said that!

These are the birds I saw while doing the hour of watching, and the totals of their numbers:

Blackbird	X 2
Blue tit	X 1
Coal tit	X 2
Dunnock	X 1
Robin	X 2
Long-tailed tit	X 9
Wren	X 1

Long tailed tits were more in number than all the other birds put together, as they often come in small flocks to our feeder. We watched out of the dining room window, with a pot of tea, and binoculars. We didn’t actually need the binoculars to see the birds, as we have a feeder only a couple of meters away from the window, but it was good to have them, just in case.

Birds are not the only animals we have seen in the garden. The low wall just outside the window, full of holes, is now known as the “mammal wall”, due to the three mice, a bank vole (nicknamed Banksy) and a shrew, (Britain’s smallest carnivore, protected by law) which we think is a Common Shrew, all coming out of the same hole. A grey squirrel comes occasionally, and ate some of the seeds off the head of the old sunflower from the summer. We get toads in summer, and frogs like to hide in the long grass. Our hope is for something really exiting, like a slow worm, or a woodpecker, to come and make our garden its home. This summer we might build a proper pond, which will encourage more wildlife to come to the garden.