I’ve lived in this place in SW Wales for 25 years and, as usual, put out food for the visiting #birds. At the start you’d see a couple of dozen species visiting each day. Just now I fed them and total visitors to table so far = zero. The magpies and wood-pigeons will eventually wander by and vac it all up. The changes are so noticeable and chilling.
I helped an old dude clear out his garage last year. In the back was a big, old, still half-full 10L bottle of washer fluid that advertised how effective it was at clearing insects off the windscreen. He said that during the peak of Spring you couldn’t drive more than fifteen minutes without using a few spritz to clear them, but at some point he just stopped having to refill with anything more potent that antifreeze. Personally, I honestly can’t remember the last time I used my sprayers, but I’m sure it’s been over a decade.
Insects are dying because we’re killing them.