The biennial National Insect Week happened on 19th-25th of June this year with insect-based activities going on throughout the UK. Here at Rothamsted we invited some local schools to come on a bug-hunt around the grounds of Rothamsted Manor.
Preparations began the week before, with digging of some bucket pitfall traps and the erection (careful Dan!) of a breeding cage to house any large interesting things that would be found. The carefully selected area was a few acres of long meadow grass studded with umbellifers and other flowering plants, a setaside field with lots of bare ground and (dead) sow thistles and a piece of mixxed woodland dominated by beech. Equipment included a few butterfly nets, a sweep net, a beating tray, some pooters, magnifying glasses, books and lots and lots of sample pots.
Monday came round and a quick trip to the hunt area revealed the scale of the disaster; the acres of lush meadow were now a fringe around some neat rows of cut hay being collected into those giant toilet rolls that pass for haystacks these days. Not only that but the cage (brand new) had been used at some point at the weekend as some sort of hash tent-at least the blim burns and piles of Pringles tubes tended to suggest this. A quick panic and tidy up followed but there was no time to change things-the first bus load of kids had arrived.
A total of around 200 children aged 9-13, visited over four days in groups of about thirty, these were split into parties of 10-15 kids depending on how many volunteers we had and given free rein to explore. They kids turned out to be quite adept at catching insects with their sample pots-one even caught a
Meadow Brown! (poor thing), and surprisingly few were at all squeamish or scared, and with myself and others handling the scary big things (picking up bumblebees always impresses
) what few kids that were scared were soon mucking in with the rest.
As it turned out, those fringes of grass turned out to be very productive-perhaps the local insects that had survived the cut had congregated in the remainder-and the kids were able to find lots of bugs. Highlights included Wasp Beetle (
Clytus arietis), a
Leiopus species, the Violet Black-legged Robberfly
Dioctria atricapilla (my personal favorite), the sodier fly
Chloromyia formosa, a ruby-tailed wasp, five species of ladybird, six species of bee and six species of butterfly among lots of other flies, beetles and bugs.
What was a particular success was the hawkmoths. We ran a moth trap each night (including the night prior to the start) and any interesting moths were held in the cage (this cage is around 6 feet cubed by the way). the first day saw a buff tip, together with Eyed and Elephant Hawks, these were joined by Privet, Lime and Poplar during the week. Handling these big moths was a treat for the kids and goes to show that 10 year olds
can queue!
The bucket pitfalls worked well, turning up Carabids such as
Harpalus rufipes and
Pterostichus every day, along with plenty of wolf spiders, particularly
Pardosa sp.. The pooters were a let down-the rubber tubing had deteriorated and no suction could be sustained. The beating tray was a revelation-previously I have only beaten for insects rarely and in a desultory manner, here we were covering the tray with hundreds of aphids, caterpillars, lacewing & ladybird larvae, leaf beetles and many other small insects. There was always a crowd when the beating tray unfolded! After a couple of warnings about brambles and thistles the butterfly nets were handed out to the kids, who still had more success with their sample pots, they ended up being used as banners more than insect catchers. Leaf litter searches on a white bedsheet turned up lots of harvestmen, woodlice, fungus gnats and other small flies. It must be said that although the big insects did draw lots of attention the children were still fascinated by even the smallest dullest insects, as long as they could put them in their pots.
All in all things went very well-no major stings or bites (other than nettle stings) and very few tears; one young lad got upset at people being 'unkind to nature' and a quick glance at Mirid bugs being stuffed into tubes by fat fingers, slugs being put in with moths and a lot of general pot shaking confirmed this was sometimes the case. But generally the response from kids and teachers was overwhelmingly positive. It helps that at Rothamsted we have a great number of competent entomologists who have a great depth of knowledge and so we could provide four or five people each day to give identifications and information (including some of the top theoretical entomologists in the country (not me I hasten to add)), but, to be honest you could probably have had just as much input from enthusiatic amateurs with no detriment to the experience for the kids. Hopefully we have awakened some interest in the next generation as there are perilously few entomologists at the moment, most of which are close to, or past, retirement age.
So National Insect Week returns in 2008, when well probably be repeating this as it went so well.
Thanks to all of you who have laboured to the end of this opus-hope it wasn't too difficult to read! I also hope I've inspired someone to organise similar activities two years hence...
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