One of the highlights of last year’s many hours spent staring at vegetation and leaf-fossicking was the number of bugs and beetles I found, many of them new sightings for me. You may have noticed that this year my blog posts have hardly included any insects, which is because I’m just not seeing many. To give you an example, this past weekend I spent about four hours, totally focused on looking for bugs and beetles. The two shieldbugs shown here are all I found, the Parent bug (Elasmucha grisea) on Saturday, the Common green shieldbug (Palomena prasina) yesterday.

As with so many other things, I’m beginning to think this is due to our over-heated summer. It may be that some insects are unable to survive the heat, or perhaps the plants they rely on for food are either not providing their usual levels of nourishment or have died in the dry conditions. It’s also possible that those insects that have survived the heat and drought are being heavily predated by hungry birds, and other predators, that are struggling to find enough sustenance. Living in Wales I never thought I’d be saying this (and I hope I’m not jinxing the coming winter’s weather) but we really need rain!