Most of our ladybirds are on the northern edge of their ranges in Britain, and so if the climate warms, it’s likely to improve things for them – species may well be able to live further north, and potentially have multiple broods in a year more frequently.
Perhaps it might seem odd to think of an insect as endearing. But whilst most of them may not be as cuddly as a kitten moth at first glance, they do make for amongst the safest wild creatures for novices to handle, for both the handled and the handler.
Nature in the UK is not so much flying high as sinking fast, whether moths or otherwise.
It is amongst the most diverse of all insect families, numbering around 60,000 species worldwide, of which about 3,000 occur in the UK.
Technically speaking, most members of this large family of flies can be identified as hoverflies by the presence of a spurious extra ‘vein’ on their wing.
The gentle green glow which gives this special insect its name emanates from the lower abdomen of females on summer evenings, peaking in June and July.
Lurking under almost every mass of cuckoo spit in Britain will be a nymph of the common froghopper, Philaenus spumarius, on its way to becoming one of the highly variable adult colour morph – which range from mottled pale brown to almost solid black.
Few who presumed moths to be uniformly brown and a bit boring could hold that view after gazing on the Deilephila, big bold creatures dressed as if ready to star in an 80’s music video.
Dragonflies still have the air of monsters from another age: spectacular, intricate hunting machines with powerful complex eyes and powers of flight almost unrivalled anywhere else in the animal kingdom.
Members of the family specialise in scavenging a variety of plant and animal matter from hair and dry skin to pollen to dead insects, which probably explains the long-dead specimens resembling the aforementioned A.verbasci littering the deceased-fly-detritus rich windowsills of a rather crumbling flat I lived in last year.