snipefly

Snipefly

Day 361 #365DaysWild

Wet and cold that goes on and on this year.

Heavy rain on successive days.

Vegetable garden plants not thriving with slugs and snails having a heyday.

Invertebrates very low in numbers - butterflies and moths depressingly absent. One species of bumblebee present today.

This is all hugely worrying.

Sure, we’re in England and we’re synonymous with wet summers.

But this time the unremittingly bad news from across the country about invertebrates comes after a series of poor years.

A pincer action of fragmented habitat, toxic pesticides, unsympathetic land use and the wet, cold weather is resulting in ever-smaller residual invertebrate populations. The consequence of this affects species’ ability to bounce back. They simply aren’t there.

Ever-smaller populations of invertebrates affect food chains. Our skies are empty of swallows, martins and swifts and our trees empty of flycatchers. Hedgehogs are undernourished and fail to thrive. Bats have insufficient food.

And so on.

Today, very few invertebrates in the sodden meadows.

Perhaps appropriately, a couple of snipeflies hanging out on ragwort foliage. They hunt beetles and other invertebrates in wet meadows.