Insects and Climate
Hello and welcome to my second post on Substack.
The last session of the nature writing class I've been teaching for a local mental health project took place last week at Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Gardens. The focus was on insects and pollination. It had been raining all day and was still very windy so I wasn't sure we would see many insects. However, we were pleasantly surprised! We walked around the area near the Botanic Cottage and saw most of the common species of bumblebees, two species of hoverflies, two species of butterfly, common wasps and a damselfly. We spent a lovely few minutes standing in the sunshine enjoying the sight of a whole crowd of bumblebees of different species buzzing around amongst lavender bushes. Many insect species are suffering devastating declines in their populations, so places like the Botanics, which offer lots of nectar bearing flowers are more important than ever.
Here's an excellent article about insect declines.
Read here about the Wildlife Trust's campaign to help insects in the UK.
I'm currently carrying out butterfly surveys in two locations in Edinburgh.
Image: Speckled Wood butterfly
Butterfly surveying requires quite specific weather conditions: the temperature must be above 13 degrees centigrade if it's sunny, but if it's cloudy, then the temperature needs to be at least 17 degrees centigrade. The wind must not be too high and you can't survey if it's raining. It feels as though the weather in Edinburgh has rarely been good enough for butterfly surveys this season! It's frequently been colder and wetter than we would expect, with high winds that just don't seem to be able to blow themselves out. This isn't evidence, as some might say, that climate change is a hoax. It may be within the parameters of normal climatic variation, but, on the other hand, it is possibly a sign that we are starting to lose the Gulf Stream that gives the UK and much of Western Europe more equitable climates than would otherwise be the case. Read here about how global warming could disrupt the gulf stream and thus lead to colder temperatures in the northern hemisphere.
It's not just insects that are in steep decline. Many of our favourite birds are declining too. Swifts declined by an estimated 51% between 1995 and 2015 and continue to decline. These amazing summer visitors have nested in our local area since we moved to our current flat over 20 years ago, but there are now considerably fewer of them here than there used to be. We put up two swift nest boxes a couple of years ago, but they haven't been used. There's an excellent video from the RSPB about how we can help swifts (largely by putting up nest boxes) and another very short video showing the route taken by a swift as it flies from the UK to Africa and back (for me this route is particularly interesting as the swift seems to fly directly over the village in Malawi where I lived for a couple of years in the early 1990s). It was World Swift Day on 7 June, an opportunity to celebrate and help conserve these wonderful birds.
On Saturday, we escaped from the city centre and all the excitement around the weekend's concerts and walked round Figgate Park, a small park which is often surprisingly good for wildlife and where tensions were rising between the Canada Geese and the Mute Swans on the pond.
What I'm Doing
I'll be reading a couple of poems at Edinburgh's Climate Festival, which will take place on the afternoon of Saturday 29 June in the Meadows! Watch this space for more details!
What I'm reading
I'm enjoying Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman - over 1000 pages of stream of consciousness from a narrator who, among other things, is very worried about the state of the natural world. It's surprisingly absorbing and sometimes very funny.
For non-fiction, I've just started reading The Dance of Air and Sea by Arnold H. Taylor which looks at the interactions between oceans, weather and life.
Interesting Articles
The carbon footprint of private jet usage by Taylor Swift and other billionaires.
A farmer co-operative joins forces with researchers to help improve river health across England.
funny how long it has been. I started following you, or was it the other way around on blogspot, then Facebook and now here we are on Sub stack. I have 1 entry only. Trying to dung out 41 yrs at this old house and not able to get consistent with writing. Good to find you here!
Insect declines lead to avian declines and so forth down the line. When our Earth organism is out of balance, the Earth has to react. To achieve homeostasis. This is what is taking place.