Where Have the Insects Gone?

To the west of our house the undulating Suffolk countryside is intensively farmed, controlled, with large fields filled with serried ranks of a single crop - onions, wheat, sugar beet, potatoes, grass - and more modern crops like electricity grown by wind turbines. Between the fields are slivers of semi-wilderness in which wild animals, insects and birds hang on, but more remarkable than the occasional hare or deer are the absences: on our walk on a beautiful early summer's day, which lasted almost four hours, we saw only one swallow and not a single martin. These are birds which feed on insects on the wing, and it is the latter's absence which is of such concern.

The only insects which seem to be doing well are the dragon- and damselflies, of which we saw at least five species including our first black-tailed skimmer (above). In places azure damselflies almost crowded the footpaths. However, in the first hour and a half of walking we saw not a single butterfly, but once we were out onto the Deben marshes a few appeared: we recognised several common blue, two speckled woods, a red admiral, a white, a meadow brown and what might have been a painted lady.

We also saw several species of bumblebee and hover fly, but the air was eerily clear of other insects.

There was a day when, after a summer's journey in a car, the windscreen was sticky with squashed insects. Today one can drive all day and find few casualties. The decline in insect species may be down to habitat loss, changes in land management practice, and climate change, but in the world of intensive farming, where there is hardly a weed in the serried ranks of crops, the pesticides used must be doing immense damage to insect life.