Weather forecasters

1. What do the earth worms know that I don't. Yesterday morning we discovered that they've moved up inside our compost bin in numbers  - sitting above the compost on the wall of the bin and up to where the lid sits on the rim. We've never seen them do that before. And yesterday and today we experienced a heavy rain event with associated high humidity. It rained (not showered) steadily all day. The clouds are moving from north-west to the south-east instead of the more normal south-west to north-east and we usually get heavy rain when that happens.

2. Last week my father, an amateur beekeeper, noticed some bees going into a hole in the top of an old disused hive he had stored in his shed. He kept an eye on it and the activity continued. That evening he expected to see, and did see, increased activity. There were a large number of bees flying about in his suburban back yard and they settled in the old hive (presumably the queen was with them). Next day he moved the hive out to a better spot in the garden and set it up properly and the bees are now busily constructing new honeycomb. The mystery is how the exploring bees found the hive in the first place.

Highrise living

Our son's unit is two stories high and the spouting was sprouting. Leaves and sticks had accumulated and because it hadn't been cleaned out for a while the debris had composted nicely. One short section can be accessed from the balcony so yesterday that was cleaned out and the garden will benefit from the extra mulch.
There was one surprise though. Amongst the rotting debris was a full-sized worm, an ordinary garden variety of worm. How did it get there? Worms don't climb brick walls do they? I'm thinking there are two possibilities. Maybe a worm egg was in dirt on the foot of a bird and dropped off when the bird perched on the spouting. Or maybe a bird had a worm in its beak and it, or a piece of it, dropped into the spout. [See my previous blog, July 1 2007, re worms]
Any comments?

Two for the price of one

Re my last blog: I've been reading about worms to find out if they do in fact regenerate if they are cut in half. This is what I've learned.

• If a worm is cut in half only one half will regrow, usually the end with the head or the most intact segments
• some worm species don't regenerate well
• the worm will never regrow more segments than it has lost.
• even today, little is known about the exact mechanism that regulates the regeneration of lost segments.
  

Now I have to finish reading Amy Stewart's very interesting, delightful and engrossing book The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms. And then I'll return it to the library for someone else to read. Aren't libraries great?

Worming my way out of trouble

I was 17 years old. After attending Teachers' College for a few weeks I was now going on 'teaching round', into a real classroom with real children. It was a very intimidating situation—and what was even more intimidating was the daily allocation of teaching tasks set for us by the teacher each afternoon for the following day. Because it was a primary school we were asked to teach on any subject. We had to be instant experts.
I remember one of my first lessons was 'nature study' and I was asked to give a lesson on the topic of earthworms. Now I grew up on a farm and was very familiar with worms. I knew exactly where to find them when I wanted to go fishing for eels. I knew how big they were and their shape and colour. But their life cycle? Zero.

The classroom teacher rescued me from my ignorance. He produced Australian Nature Studies by J. A. Leach, and I and the students learnt a lot about worms. (Reading it now though, I wonder if Leach is right about one thing. He says "If it be cut in two, each half grows the missing portion.")

Several years ago I came across the book in a secondhand bookshop and bought it. It's in quite good condition and the remains of the original paper cover have been pasted on to the hard cover, front and back. I have a lot of reference books on my bookshelf now but it's amazing how many times I refer to Leach.
Apparently there are over 1000 species of worms in Australia and about 80 of these are introduced. Very few species of worms can live in agricultural ground (the insecticides and fungicides are a problem) so if you want to find an Australian native worm you have to look in the woodlands and forests. Darwin thought worms were tremendously important so perhaps I should be paying them more attention.