Flies

The darker mornings and heavy rain take us that first step into autumn. The leaves are starting to turn, telephone lines are filling up with birds gathering for their great annual migrations and plants are going into seed to ensure their survival through the winter. Autumn is a wonderful time to be out in the countryside. Wind and rain freshen the land after prolonged dusty dryness, and many insects are coming into their own.

We tend to be very dismissive towards insects, as if they are of no importance. But of course their place in the food chain and web of life is central; so many birds depend on flying insects for the bulk of their diet – just think of those circling swallows swooping over your garden, scooping up small insects by the hundreds every day. Swifts live almost all their lies in the air, landing only to nest and living entirely on a diet of flying insects and air-born spiders.

At this time of year there is a plentiful supply of suitable insects, with obvious autumnal regulars like the Crane fly (Daddy long-legs) abundant wherever there is a good patch of grassland. The Crane fly spends most of its life as a larva underground; you will have dug up those large leatherjacket larvae, plentiful under your lawn and voracious munchers of grass roots. The mature adults are also known as mosquito hawks, though they won’t bite you, preferring to sunbathe on walls and windows on warm days, and at night lights attract them into houses where they buzz and flap around – annoying, but no danger. With their lanky legs, wings and long abdomen, they are not a cuddly insect. The female has a pointed tip to her abdomen, which makes her easily distinguishable from the male.

There are at least 120,000 recorded species of fly, and probably the same amount again waiting to be identified. Some can be dangerous, like the malaria-carrying mosquitoes (3,500 species) which still kill about five million people every year; the nice male lives off fruit juices and plant nectar – only the female drives her proboscis into the chosen victim to suck blood. Horse flies (3,000 species) have a reputation in this part of the world for biting aggressively, but they are also valuable pollinators. Again it’s only the female who has the mouthparts capable of biting through skin and she needs the blood to help her eggs develop; the male feeds on nectar and pollen.

Blow flies (1100 species) have a terrible reputation, but are really beautiful creatures, with irridescent green and blue bodies. Found across the globe they can be a problem if the female lays her eggs in human food, which they tend to do in batches of about 200 so that the protein can help the eggs. We call their larvae ‘maggots’, and tend to shrink from them in fear and disgust because they are always associated with death and decay. Any mammal corpse in the wild will, if not rapidly eaten by other predators, be full of blow-fly eggs within a few hours. The maggots hatch within a day and consume the dead animal; after about a week they are ready to pupate, burrowing underground to emerge as mature blowflies after another seven days. Disgusting and smelly perhaps, but a wonderfully simple, efficient and necessary way of removing an equally unsightly and inevitable problem of dead animals littering the countryside. Take away the veneer of civilization and that is the fate of you and me.

Heritage Week Success

Heritage Week has been very memorable at Cabragh Wetlands and many thanks must go to the dozens of people who gave so generously of their time and energy to help ensure that our Open Day was such a resounding success. Among the many benefits of the day was the sense of community involvement, both in the planning of the event and on the day itself. To have so many people willing to help out was humbling and reflects positively both the work of the Wetland Trust and the great spirit of fellowship in the area.

Our afternoon with Dale Treadwell went very well, and special thanks to Thurles Library for supporting the event. It was good to see an expert and showman like Dale enthuse the children (and adults) about the smaller members of our community – the insects, bugs, and creepy-crawlies that play key roles in the web of life, and whose myriad numbers are crucial to support the food chain that sustains us. Love that wasp: he does more than you probably realise to clear debris in your garden and pollinate plants. Help those bees, whose future thankfully seems less worrying than a year or two ago. We have several varieties here at Cabragh, including a beautiful red-bottomed species which can be seen readily enough flying from flower to flower on these warm late summer days. Take time to enjoy the wonderful array of butterflies which have been evident this year; think about how you can preserve corners of your garden or farm where plants can grow which sustain species of butterfly and other insects.

Dale’s influence on the children could be seen in our Open day Fancy Dress Parade, when there were some magnificent butterflies, with colourful gossamer wings. I loved the colourful garden fairy, and among the mammals on display were several brown and white ponies (or were they cows?). A fine pair of vivid black and yellow wasps buzzed up and down the catwalk, stings hovering menacingly – perhaps they were visiting Kilkenny fans? They are very welcome at Cabragh, even in this momentous week! Many thanks to every child that took part in the parade, and to their creative advisers!