11 hours ago
10
I live near the River Bure and I like to go there every day to watch the wildlife. Recently, I made a trap out of a large plastic bottle and put it in some shallow ditches to see what I could get. I cut off the top of the bottle and stuck it inside the bottom bit upside-down. That way, creatures can come in through the top but can’t escape because it’s pointing inwards. I found two bamboo poles, stuck them in the ditch and put the trap between them. It was filled halfway with ditch water.
The next morning, I found a Eurasian water scorpion, a small beetle, a newt, some leeches and a few sticklebacks in the trap. The scorpions are not venomous but you can’t handle them because they’ll give you a nasty bite.
They’re called water scorpions because they have a long whip-like tail which they use to breathe under water, four skinny legs to walk on and two dagger-like claws to catch prey. They’re not related to scorpions.
When I looked in the trap, the beetle was attacking the water scorpion. The water scorpion managed to fling the beetle to the other side, where the newt was. Then this beetle clung on to the newt’s neck and tried to bite it and this caused a fight. The newt was 10 times bigger than the beetle and flung it off, but the beetle just went back on the newt again. I opened the trap and quickly put all of the creatures back in the ditch before any of them got killed.
Hal, eight
