This article first appeared on page 19 of Birdwatching Magazine December 2024
Back in lockdown I kept a diary… inevitably my tiny yard featured heavily. After all, where else could I go? I’m a gardener, albeit a bit of a fair weather one; when the wind blows my arthritis in the wrong direction there can be weeks of neglect. When most of your garden is hundreds of planters, you water, or the garden dies. Conscious of climate change and local extinctions, I’ve catered for a Mediterranean climate and bee-friendly planting. Salvias and lavender, osteospermums and silvery leaf things abound. Shady damp corners are piled up with dead wood and debris for nesting bumblebees. We even put out shallow trays for insects to drink from and there are seven ‘bee-houses’ spread around the yard.
As we couldn’t go out birding, we contented ourselves with backyard bugging. I found that the camera on my iPhone was good enough to snap bees and hoverflies so I could blow up the photos on my desktop screen and find the ID features.
All this by way of telling you that the yard has, since then, clocked up 27 species of hoverfly and 22 bees! I have to say it really surprised me that a yard that you can just about spit across, has such variety. Of course they weren’t all seen every year. Regular readers may recall that one lavender suffered giantism, which happily resulted in being a magnet that buzzed with dozens and dozens of individual pollinators.
But here’s the thing, this year the count has been abysmal. Four species of hoverfly and seven bees only. Until late August it wasn’t just lacking variety but numbers too. The lavender was going over before a crowd of twenty honey bees and half a dozen bumblebees came at once along with just two flower bees.
I know I am not alone, everyone I know is asking “where have all the insects gone?”
Its been a bad year because of the patterns of weather, not just regular rain inundations, but virtually constant high winds. When the heat soaked along with the wet, plants flourished… but pollinator breeding was adversely affected. The mad rush of heat saw everything flowering at once for a short season… presumably unable to sustain the insects when they most needed the nectar and pollen.
So there we have it, terrible sustained weather patterns, decimated insect populations. It could hardly be worse. Or could it?
Well, of course it could, selfish and myopic humanity could turn a worrying problem into total disaster.
My local district authority, like many across the UK has banned the use of pesticides and herbicides in general and glyphosate in particular. It leaves verges to flourish until the wild world drops its seeds. Parks are mown less frequently, albeit to save money, only incidentally saving bees.
The county council, despite being on the edge of bankruptcy, decided it would spray the kerbs and pavements in its purview, which includes mine. A petition was quickly put up, logging hundreds of protesting people. Did the county react in the spirit of democracy and good old common sense? Of course not! Totally ignoring cost, its citizens wishes and the environment… it went ahead and sprayed.
Elsewhere in today’s news… untreated sewage dumped into Windermere… the badger cull to continue until 2029 against all evidence… SSSI’s owned by water companies unprotected.
We‘re living the dream, it’s just another day in paradise. Will this green and pleasant land become one huge parking lot first, a chemical farm, a badger-free zone, a carcinogenic dump or an open sewer… its anyone’s guess.
