Biodiversi-tastic!

I set myself the very enjoyable challenge of trying to photograph and, where possible, identify all the species of insects I found along a short stretch of path on my patch – in the space of a couple of hours.

There were a lot!

Once you get your eye in it’s amazing how much diversity there is – everything you look at seems to be something new.

And you can do this almost anywhere – a flower bed in the garden is perfect.

These are just the ones I managed to photograph, the actual number of insect species that make this plot their home will be several times this.

And these are just the insects, if you broadened it to the spiders, worms, molluscs, plants, higher animals etc, etc - and even the microbes - there will be way, way more.

Then think about individuals, not just species – astronomical numbers in this tiny fragment of planet Earth.

We hear a lot these days about wildlife numbers being depleted, this is true and very concerning.

However numbers are often compared to a supposed golden age several decades ago. But numbers would have been depleted then too – when compared to, say, a hundred before that. Imagine if a hundred years from now *this* is regarded as a golden age.

This *is* a golden age!

We are alive on a planet teeming with life. There is still an immense amount of nature out there – I think the important thing is to cherish what we have – and in cherishing it protect it.

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Numbers of species photographed
dragonflies 1
moths 6
beetles 7
true bugs 5
bees 5
sawflies 5
hoverflies 1
craneflies 2
other flies 16

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