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Feb 13Liked by Richard Gregson FRSB

Makes me grin to read the transect through your memory banks and straight back out onto the beach. Biology is great fun indeed!

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Excellent an I too like having raccoons around. They're interesting to watch near shorelines and shallow water if you get a chance. They will feel around with their paws in the water for food. Almost everytime I've seen raccoons and they see me, they have this sheepish guilty manner about them. Haha.

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Ferreting in the muddy water in ditches here - but yes, I know that look

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Delightful from start to finish! Are you one of the industrious students in that transect photo?

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Well, I was "one of those students" over 50 years ago in 1968 or thereabouts but I think that particular group were at it in the last year or two - I found the photo on the field centre website. the years move on but the technology is much the same.

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I find scientists' newsletters to be very rewarding! Another one by an eminent biologist is Walter Tschinkel's. He is a distinguished specialist in entomology with a specialty in myrmecology. I.have his books The Fire Ants and also the one on Ant Architecture. You scientists are like jewels when you turn your minds to writing for us...

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" ... when you turn your minds to writing for us"

It's really hard to do though I try now that I am retired. The problem is that when writing for or talking to a "lay" audience you make assumptions about the level of knowledge ... as in "oh, everyone knows that, it's common knowledge" when in fact that's not always so

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Speaking only for myself I actually enjoy having to stretch my mind a little to grasp technical material. Then I can learn something!

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Me too ... it's a question of having the language to understand what I am reading sometimes. Learning stuff is always worthwhile.

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😉

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