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Post by jamesd on Feb 16, 2011 1:53:40 GMT -8
At what age did you first start collecting insects? I'm curious.
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Post by bobw on Feb 16, 2011 2:07:42 GMT -8
5 years old - more than 50 years ago. I once asked my mother why she thought I chose entomology as a hobby and she said "I don't think you did, I think it chose you". Evidently I was absolutely fascinated by butterflies from the time I was old enough to notice them. I've had plenty of other hobbies over the years but this is the only one that's lasted.
Bob
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Post by wollastoni on Feb 16, 2011 2:08:13 GMT -8
I was 8 years old. A Catocala species was trapped in a wasptrap in my garden.
My mother, a biology professor, showed me how to spread it. And then I was hooked for life ! I had also the chance to have a butterfly shop, 100 meters from my home. It helped a lot. I started collecting all French rhopaloceras from Brittany, Alpes and Corsica, it was fascinating.
Then thanks to internet, I started collecting discovered Delias and specialised myself in them, making good friends all over the world and travelling to Asia/Oceania everyyear.
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Post by wolf on Feb 16, 2011 2:20:38 GMT -8
My parents bought my first net when i was 3, after seeing how interessted i was in bugs. And with their help i built up a small collection. In the beginning i collected all kinds of bugs, but after a while i concentrated more on butterflies. But i also collect moths and beetles i find interessting ;P I stopped collecting when entering my teenage years, and then started collecting again 2 years ago at an age of 20.
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Post by jamesd on Feb 16, 2011 2:28:17 GMT -8
I pinned my first, early last year, when I was 14. But I started actually collecting around november last year.
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Post by nomihoudai on Feb 16, 2011 2:37:56 GMT -8
I started multiple times during my short life.
The first experience I can remember I was 6 years old and found a butterfly pupae and I was so happy as I had a feeling of looking for it for ages and I finally found one, so I probably have known what is a butterfly and it's life cycle probably already at the age of 4.
When people ask me why I like them so much my answer is similar to the one Bob's mother gave, I never have chosen to colelct butterflies, I was born as one.
Later I tried multiple times to collect and preserve them but it failed, I had nobody that could help me, nobody to explain me how to mount them and I did not get myself the idea of spreading them and then let mount.
I then stopped after my last attempt of catalogising species at the age of 14 and breeding a few until I was 20.
It was an evening and I was bored, and then it popped into my head that I had been trying for years to get tropical species but never could get them, an dthen I got the idea to take a look on ebay, I immediately got an Attacus atlas male and 20 mixed tropical species for a good price. So if my posts here annoy anyone, blame it on ebay ;D
Since then I am making up time as good as I can ( for the record, I am turning 23 soon ), I got in touch with a few museum,s a few researchers and they are all extremely nice guys ( and girls, but so far the only I met is Blanca Huertas in BMNH ). Now I am looking forward to the Symposium of European Lepidoptology that will be held this year in my homecountry Luxembourg, I wonder how many more people I will meet there.
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Post by johnnyboy on Feb 16, 2011 2:42:38 GMT -8
I began collecting over 40 years ago when I was 8 years old. I used to mount butterflies on a pad of cotton wool in a jam jar. My prize specimen was a swallowtail, P machaon that was caught by someone else in St Mary Cray, Kent. It must have been a rare migrant from the Continent. Unfortunately my mother threw it out claiming that it was unhygenic. It didn't stop me from pursuing the hobby, eventually my parents approved and supported me.
Johnny
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Post by wollastoni on Feb 16, 2011 3:24:31 GMT -8
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Post by nomihoudai on Feb 16, 2011 3:28:53 GMT -8
Nice, funny thing I noticed is that the number of girls and women collecting butterflies as hobby exceeds the number of female lepidoptologists by far. In Coleoptera it is the other way round, I never came across a female beetle "amateur" collector, but there is many female researchers in that field ;D
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Post by maliciousinchworm on Feb 16, 2011 3:46:04 GMT -8
I begun at 7, seems we all early chose what we were doing the rest of our lifes. In my case, my mother was pregnant and she couldn´t get me to the park to play with other children, as my brother was about to born. But I live in a small town where wild fields are among the houses and buildings, so she could look after me from the window of our flat while I was chasing insects, so she proposed me to do an insect collection. This is how I was started, and since then I´ve not stopped, some ups and downs, but always going ahead. Let me know where are those young girls, because I must know over 500 entomologists and all the chicks are below 1%. But I agree, we are an endearing community always helping each other, there are many nice guys among us. I´m a nice guy indeed, hahaha.
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Post by wollastoni on Feb 16, 2011 3:53:03 GMT -8
How can girls spend 300 € in a pair of Louboutin shoes instead of purchasing a nice Delias eximia or Ornitho... it makes no sense at all ! :-)
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Post by maliciousinchworm on Feb 16, 2011 3:55:36 GMT -8
That´s what I say, they even don´t appreciate a good lightrapping night in a swamp forest, they´re crazy...
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Post by downundermoths on Feb 16, 2011 5:08:24 GMT -8
The oldest leps still in my collection that were self-collected, are two Copper Underwing moths - Amphipyra pryamidea, dated 1958...I had been at it for about 4 or 5 years prior to that...about 9 years old at start...
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2011 6:33:55 GMT -8
I started when I was 5 ... some 47 years ago.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2011 6:52:14 GMT -8
7 years old, almost 40 years ago, my friends were allowed to stray a lot further than my parents would allow me to, the only butterflies I had seen up to this point were pieris rapae and aglais urticae, I remember my older friends had been to a dissused railway line about a mile from my house and came back with some inachis io and vanessa atalanta and liberated them onto the curtain in my friends living room, I had never seen anything so beautiful, later that day I sneaked off with them back to the railway line and saw my first small copper butterfly l phlaeas, nothing before or since has managed to rival that exitement and it has stayed with me all this time, like others I have had other hobbies but never kept them up for a consistant period of time, I still get the feeling of exitement whether it is collecting in the field or going to insect fairs.
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