For the past few years, while I’ve been photographing our garden flora and fauna, I’ve noticed a gradual reduction in the number and variety of insects. This year however, the change has been dramatic – there really are almost no bugs despite the fact that we continue to expand the gardens. There are some honey bees (but no where near the numbers in the recent past), a few bumble bees, very few butterflies and hummingbird moths, and very small numbers of dragonflies. I have seen no small spiders at all.
Of course my observations are strictly anecdotal and not based on real research but they seem to jibe with studies from around the world – that the bug population is rapidly decreasing. Can you remember the last time you had to clean bugs off your windshield? Unfortunately this trend does NOT include ticks or mosquitoes…
From food production to avian ecology, should this trend continue, the impact could be staggering.