A few weeks ago I wrote that I was slightly disappointed by how few insects were on my cornfield patch: it was a sunny and warm day, but not really a hive of activity. Today it's cooler and the flowers were covered with hoverflies and the odd bumblebee. When I say covered I mean, each metre squared of flowers had about 20 or so hoverflies. And the patch is 20 metres squared, so that's 400 hoverflies.
I think the recent interest in wildlife friendly plants is slightly misleading because it often depends where your plant is planted, what else is flowering nearby, the weather conditions, soil, number of plants planted, and also what stage of flowering it's at. I have 4 coreopsis along the drive and so far I've only seen one hoverfly on them! But, the privet is flowering so everything's on that. So, maybe, once they really get going and the privet stops, they'll all go to the coreopsis...
Maybe. But I'm only pretending to be a naturalist.
