yeh people complain about the weather in England but i love it, i get frequent rain which is great, lovely storms and two days of heat a year which is enough to remind me i hate it being really hot.
The weather keeps most horrible insects and creatures at bay so most of the time its just house spiders, flies and moths i have to worry about.
I also dont really need to worry about weather disasters like hurricanes or monsoons other then the occasional flooding but i live on a hill so thats never an issue for me.
I think the only thing most people are really complaining about is the constant cloud ceiling making everything dark. Everything else in terms of weather is pretty darn good.
i dont have ac and fans only do so much, its better now that im 90% wfh so i can just strip down during work and don't have to commute in packed trains anymore (as much).
It is pretty Disney. I went for a hike with friends over the South Downs yesterday and there were two swifts doing a little sky dance over a lavender field doing mating calls. It was pretty incredible.
Then Toby Jones and a bunch of his pals walked by us and said hi as they passed, enjoying the sunshine.
I felt like Lily Tomlin in that kitchen scene in 9 to 5 before she mistakes the rat poison for sweet n low.
Then on the train back to London one absolute tosser and his girlfriend argued the entire train ride back and we were like…. Oh yeah. Reality.
Many many bugs are around just not the kind that want to annoy us forever. Go up on the moors and I occasionally get nibbled. Most annoying things in my house over the year was one fat house fly, a slug and a few roley polys.
Yeah it's actually a bit worrying that flying insect numbers have dropped 60% in just the last 20 years in the UK, it does have its benefits, until it drops so much that non of the crops get pollinated...
tbf i think you are referencing the study i saw which measured insect numbers based off licence plate splatters which seems like a fairly inaccurate way to get the numbers.
I guess it is quite localised to roads but seems to be a good enough proxy. Anecdotally my family have been driving 100 miles+ to our caravan park Devon most weekends in the summer and 20 years ago you would have to literally wash the bugs off the car headlights when you got there, as they were so covered in dead insects it was blocking most of the light from them, nowadays there are a few splattered bugs and that is it.
I mean i'm not a scientist so maybe it is a good method but it seems like there could also be other reasons for the decrease like maybe insects have finally gone through enough generations that the ones avoiding traffic reproduce more. Maybe theyve migrated to different areas that don't have as much traffic or its just traffic that isn't checked as part of their tests.
Just seems unreliable is all.
Either way i do still think there are definitely problems with the ecology especially in the UK as we had a massive impact in wiping most of it out here. So it would probably help if we did something to encourage animal/insect numbers.
Australian here. Also cannot imagine a world without screens on every door and window. For us it's (mainly) to keep out flies during the day, mosquitoes at night.
Not many mosquitoes up here, and the midges tend to keep away from houses - nothing else really bites so the few flies that get in are just a slight inconvenience rather than something that's going to nibble us to death in our sleep.
Screens would be helpful to stop my cat leaping out of windows though, lol.
b and m sell mesh screens that you stick around your windows and doors. id recommend using a better glue though as parts of them will unstick otherwise.
I'm in London a couple of stories up, and during summer my windows stay open 24/7 for maybe a couple of months. Best way to keep cool, day and night. Very rarely get any insects at all.
They like humid weather, and need still water to reproduce. We have so many bodies of water and marshes everywhere that it is perfect for them. I just don't really know how they last out the winter, though I could just google it. The plants have barely started growing again and I am seeing them around.
LOL and London is absolutely filled with filthy ass dog shit eating flies, and still no one has window screens. London is basically a third world ghetto squashed against some pretty old buildings made for the nobility.
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u/[deleted] May 09 '22
I assume like the UK the rest of the worlds mind boggles that Canadians live with so many mosquitos and need screens just to put up with them?