Serious fears about paucity of insects

THIS year our first encounter with the returning swifts was on May

18. Where my wife and I live (East Bristol) the swifts are a common summer sight and they are often seen screaming and wheeling over our house.

I have, in the past, sprayed a hosepipe into the air and watched them diving through the plume.

This year is different, however, because since the first sighting, they have hardly been apparent in our local skies. Rather than seeing a flock of a dozen, or more, there have been only odd sightings of two or three.

A walk around our garden also showed a paucity of insects. Normally, at this time of year, there is a humming and buzzing, with insects of all types and sizes going about their business and the joy, of a normal summer, is seeing the number and variety of these colourful creatures.

We make an attempt to grow flowers that provide a food source for them and I am very keen to see how many unusual ones appear.

Even if there are no tempting flowers in our garden, there is usually a coming and going of different insect types as they pass from one garden to another.

Unfortunately, this year it’s the opposite case and the noticeable lack of bees and the more colourful butterflies is very sad.

On July 3, we drove to Bradford on Avon and back. During the return journey, my wife remarked how clean the windscreen was. In fact, it was shockingly clean, with hardly a mark on it. We are old and we remember when it was normal to go for a drive and return with insect corpses on the windscreen, front number plate, headlights and in the radiator grill.

Cleaning the car may have been a little irritating, but far preferable to the current sterile countryside. Hopefully this is not the norm, because this situation will also impact on other wildlife. John Glover,

Bristol