Creating A Summer Buzz
We’ve had one of the best summers for years – which has allowed our beleaguered insects and bugs to bounce back, says Liam Creedon
The summer of 2014 has been downright odd. Compared to recent years there have been no floods, no droughts, no hosepipe bans, no unseasonable cold snaps and no unexpected mini tornadoes scattering roof tiles across the Midlands.
In fact, for the first time in around seven years, the UK has experienced a ‘normal’ summer – with mild temperatures livened up by the occasional thunderstorm and downpour.
And these gentle conditions have enabled our beleaguered bugs and insects, battered by season after season of weird weather, to mount something of a recovery.
Hoverflies, butterflies, beetles, bees, mosquitoes, midges and horseflies – to name just a tiny selection, have been more and more noticeable as favourable conditions have enabled them to emerge, feed and breed successfully.
But the fact that we have become unused to normal summer weather and in turn, normal summer wildlife, has drawn unfavourable publicity for some of our harder-to-love insect species.
Mosquitoes and horseflies have been singled out by the media, with breathless headlines claiming the UK was gripped by ‘swarmaggeddon’ – with thousands of biting, flying critters heading for the wrists and ankles of anyone with the temerity to venture out into the UK countryside.
Horseflies, with their giant bulbous eyes, loud buzzing and bite powerful enough to pierce cow and horsehide, can prove a real nuisance to anyone wandering near their favoured habitat of meadows and riverbanks, and have been especially targeted by the papers.
Even the humble flying ant has attracted opprobrium with claims that gulls were becoming drunk and disorderly after gorging on the insects that’d emerged early in the warm weather.
But is there any truth to all of this? Has this been an exceptional summer for the stingers and biters?
Well, not really.
Entomologist Steven Falk from wildlife charity Buglife explains: “2014 is experiencing a summer lacking extremes. It has not been excessively hot or drought-stricken or cool, wet or too windy, just a few big thunderstorms recently, and we are having a good summer for insects that are recovering from the very wet, cool summer of 2012 and exceptional late spring of 2013.
“But it is being claimed that there are more biting insects than usual, and I spend a lot of time outdoors and travelling Britain but have not noticed anything unusual. Small horseflies (clegs) are in their usual numbers in meadows, nothing exceptional here – and I’ve had no mosquito bites yet.
“Wasp numbers are down in many parts of the UK because the cold springs of 2012 and 2013 probably resulted in high mortality of queens. But numbers of bumblebees, butterflies, moths and hoverflies seem OK, although nowhere like the numbers one might have observed several decades ago.”
So the reason behind the supposed increase in insect numbers may lie in the fact that people are taking advantage of the good weather and spending more time walking and camping in the countryside than in recent summers.
Mind you, the warm southerly and easterly winds are bringing some insect surprises with them.
The Scarce Tortoiseshell butterfly, otherwise known as the Yellow-legged Tortoiseshell, has appeared in southeast counties for the first time since 1953. The only previous UK record was seen just once in Sevenoaks, Kent, yet this summer there have been unprecedented sightings in Norfolk, Suffolk and Kent and further reports of the butterfly in coastal areas stretching as far north as Lincolnshire. The Scarce Tortoiseshell is typically found from Eastern Europe to Japan.
Falk said: “There appears to be a bit of immigration this year – Scarce Swallowtails, creating much excitement and a possible influx of the Marmalade Hoverfly which is suddenly abundant. Strange wind directions related to the recent high pressures can carry a lot of continental insects into Britain and thunderstorms can act like hoovers, sucking up insects high into the atmosphere before dumping them hundreds of miles away like Saharan sand.”
The UK’s insects and bugs have suffered huge population reductions over recent decades as a result of climate change and habitat loss, so this year’s ‘normal’ summer is vitally important in helping them to mount a recovery.
“We continue to lose high quality invertebrate habitat, especially the flowery habitats required by pollinators,” Falk adds. “From a ‘natural’ perspective – prolonged drought, as in the summers of the early 1990s, and long periods of cool wet summer weather are far more damaging than what we are experiencing in 2014.”
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