Worst of all was there was this car trying to pull into the car park and I’m just stuck in the middle of the road blocking them like

I’m annoyed this made me laugh

I’m from Scotland so I don’t know much about them but I wouldn’t be surprised if their population numbers is due to other insects being in decline. Less competition and all that.

Look into local wildflowers and plant them in your gardens. Humanely kill any invasive insects when you see them; chucking them in rubbing alcohol or nail polish remover is usually a good method.

Look after your local buggies and pressure your council to address global warming and climate change ♥️

We also have issues with invasive species outcompeting our local species by eating up all the food resources which means less insects too.

The main takeaway is global warming and urbanisation is really fucking up our ecosystems and the we need to do something about it!

Not only are we losing important pollinators insects are a massive food source for a lot of larger animals, our birds and mammals and lizards etc.

Loss of insects is causing a trophic cascade across entire ecosystems. No insects means no plants to eat. No insects means insectivores can’t eat.

And since this is all prompted from your mention of bugs splatting on windshields, I know there might be some degree of “who cares? Just means less bugs to clean off my windshield” from others but actually this is a really serious problem!

It’s a trophic cascade of global warming destroying plants that can’t thrive in the heat or late frosts etc which in turn is destroying our insect habitats. This plus urbanisation, the loss of wildflowers etc means the abundance of insects has been declining over the last few decades.

This is because of a massive decline in the insect population, dubbed Insect Armageddon. We’re seeing huge declines in insect populations - particularly pollinators so bees butterflies beetles etc - due to global warming and climate change among other things like habitat loss and urbanisation.

It’s actually a recorded phenomenon called the Windshield Phenomenon that there’s fewer bugs splatting onto cars in the last couple decades. A study in the UK found that modern cars are more aerodynamic and therefore kill more bugs than older cars, and yet we see fewer bugs splatted.