Aman comes to a point in his life when he finds he has lost his stridulations. I like to joke about it, but I feel a little sadness too. For last week I was in the rough meadows around derelict glasshouses, bush grass pointing tall, betony and bedstraw in flower. Grasshoppers and crickets were chirruping […]
Tag: Grasshoppers
9 Good Bugs for Your Garden and How to Attract Them
Not all creepy-crawlers are welcome in the garden, but some insects are very beneficial to the success of your flowers, herbs and veggies. According to Almanac, beneficial bugs fall into three categories: pollinators, which help pollinate plants; predators, which feed on garden pests; and parasitizers, like parasitic wasps and other insects that lay eggs inside […]
Insects are vanishing from our planet at an alarming rate. But there are ways to help them
Insects have been around for more than 400m years, their ancestors crawling from the oceans to colonise the land long before dinosaurs appeared. They have been enormously successful, evolving into a staggering diversity of more than 1m known species, with perhaps as many as another 4m yet to be described by science. There are more […]
The insect apocalypse: ‘Our world will grind to a halt without them’
Ihave been fascinated by insects all my life. One of my earliest memories is of finding, at the age of five or six, some stripy yellow-and-black caterpillars feeding on weeds in the school playground. I put them in my empty lunchbox, and took them home. Eventually they transformed into handsome magenta and black moths. This […]
“Plagues” of Grasshoppers Hit Western US
Drought conditions in the western United States have created great conditions for grasshopper breeding and living. The hoards of grasshoppers are now devouring vegetation as their population numbers increase, CNN reported. Ranchers are worried land could be stripped bare. States like Colorado, Utah, Oregon, Wyoming, Montana and others are experiencing the onslaught. Scientists point to […]