Animals

Country diary: a squadron of swallows is fed, but fears for insect life remain


I am well over halfway to Oundle, zipping and undulating, with the wind behind me and my two wheels spinning smoothly, when an insect bounces off my upper lip and reminds me to cycle with my mouth shut. It’s enough to trigger my bioabundance anxiety – a fear that the amount of life on Earth is fading away. I reflect that in the past, cycle rides in mid-August were characterised by a light rain of insects on exposed skin, thunderflies in the eyes; and a gaping mouth was punished by the speedy ingress of animals. Surely it would not have taken two miles of cycling before the first impact.

A scatter of rooks stalk mechanically, pausing to pluck at invertebrate prey, on the green playing fields on the edge of the Nene floodplain south of Oundle. Around them a squadron of swallows skim and sweep; apparently there’s enough insect life here to keep them interested. Back at home the nest in the back porch is overflowing with near-fledgings. Viewers of BBC Springwatch were shocked by nests of starving chicks of various species, perishing despite the best efforts of their parents, but here at least we should provide some new feathered bodies for the migration south.

Birdfair in Rutland Water, 2016



Bird enthusiasts gather at Birdfair, ‘sometimes referred to as the wildlife Glastonbury’. Photograph: Alamy

At Birdfair, the annual gathering sometimes referred to as the wildlife Glastonbury, talk keeps coming back to the vexed question of insect population size. The conservationists Ken and Linda Smith report finding hardly any insects in eastern woodlands, while a Lancashire woodland is blessed with a contrasting profusion; they wonder if water availability is the key to healthy woodland insect populations and if climate change is driving declines in abundance. The ecologist Lydia Robbins enthuses about a managed woodland that buzzes with life, while its non-intervention neighbour is silent.

Where there is hard data, it describes declines in a majority of species of insects, and recent evidence of rapid collapses in flying insect bioabundance in Germany and Denmark has been deeply shocking. Some causes are obvious, but we are just awakening to this unfolding drama and learning how increasingly incongruous weather blends into climate change. Scientists have much work to do before we can clearly see the big picture and put personal experiences into context.





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