INSECTS are headline news at the moment because of their dramatic decline (‘The end need not be nigh’, August 4) and rightly so. They can survive without us, but we cannot survive without them. We are at a time of year when we literally take them under our skin— summer into autumn is when we are most likely to get bitten, stung and sucked. Ants in your pants at a picnic, a wasp on your glass, midges driving you indoors at a barbecue or a vicious cleg (horse fly) whacking you on the back of the leg in the garden.
Some are seeking food, some are defensive and others are darn well aggressive; most are irritating, some are painful and a few can even be lethal. At these times, we are not so charitable to our arthropod friends. Whether it is at work, play or even asleep, odds on one or more of these critters will get you, from the largest vespa to the minute midge or mite. It doesn’t matter, either, if you live in the countryside or the town—no one is immune. As someone who has lived and worked in the countryside all of his life, as a gamekeeper on different estates across the country, I have been bitten, stung and sucked by most of the creatures on this list.
Denne historien er fra September 15, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra September 15, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
