To cover all insects other than butterflies and moths in a single chapter calls for some compression. Insects are a class of the huge phylum called Arthropoda, the jointed-legged animals, to which crustaceans such as crabs and lobsters also belong. It is believed that there are more insect species on Earth than of all other organisms combined, certainly millions. This abundance also applies in Britain and Ireland. In this chapter I may well miss out on your favourite British insect – maybe an unusual species of ladybird – but I will try to give an accurate account of how insects are faring in our gardens and in the countryside at large. Since this is the group of organisms which were predicted to show the first and steepest declines in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, they deserve our close attention. There are more than 20 orders of insects other than the butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera), but some of these groups are relatively obscure; I will only attempt to discuss the main ones.

Bumblebees

For many of us the drowsy droning sound of bumblebees visiting flowers to collect nectar and pollen is the evocative sound of high summer. Because they are primarily insects of cool climes, Britain supports about 10% of the world’s 250 bumblebee species. But of these 25, three are already extinct, and seven are BAP listed, so Rachel Carson’s predictions were not wrong in this regard, although pesticides are probably not the primary factor in bumblebee decline. Rather this has mainly resulted from habitat destruction.