In 2010 I edited a multi-author book entitled Silent Summer, which set out to provide an in-depth audit of wildlife in Britain and Ireland over the last 50 years, with predictions of what the future may hold. That previous book was well received, but was a somewhat weighty reference volume with 36 chapters and over 60 authors. This present book aims to carry the same message but to present the information more concisely and in a more accessible format.

How Silent Summer came to be written

At the outset I should like to explain how the original book came to be written. Over the last 60 years, I have lived to see dramatic reductions in the numbers of many common insects and birds within the UK. As a schoolboy in Edinburgh in the 1940s I roamed the countryside on the outskirts of the city, and remember fields and waste ground with a huge abundance of butterflies such as small tortoiseshell and meadow brown, innumerable bumblebees and large populations of now scarce birds such as corn buntings and grey partridge. When I acquired a car in the 1950s, it was fitted, as were almost all other cars, with a must-have accessory, a small plastic device attached to the front of the bonnet to help deflect insects from splattering the windscreen. When one stopped at a petrol station to refuel, staff regularly provided a windscreen washing service to remove the dead insects that had clouded the glass, despite the efficacy of the deflector. These gadgets have disappeared because the need for them has gone, a stark indicator of the dramatic decline of so many common insects.