Like the petals of flowers they fly, weightless on a summer breeze, to love, delight and inspire. They are butterflies, just one of the many orders of insects that enrich our lives in very many way, writes Zoe Devlin
Burnet Moth
Often, when folk think of insects, they picture a beetle, a green fly, even a blue bottle, none of them beautiful enough for an artist to commit to a canvas. But reflect on the sight of dragonflies, their wings shimmering like shining lace as they dart, zig-zagging across the surface of a pond. Consider the larger, butterfly-sized moths, some in the bright colours of the rainbow, sleepily hanging onto a summer window having searched out the light the night before. Ponder on creatures such as the childhood favourites, the ladybirds or big fat fuzzy bumblebees buzzing around the flowers in hedgerows or gardens. And who can remember listening as a child to the magical meadow sound of grasshoppers and watching earwigs, hoping it wasn’t true that they’d make their way into an ear!
Insects come in all shapes and sizes but are united by one fact .. they have six legs – unlike spiders which have another two. Many of them have two pairs of wings but in some cases – beetles for instance – the upper pair have been modified over time into hardened wing cases which protect their second wings for flight. They all have bodies that are arranged into three parts – a head, a thorax and an abdomen. Those who study insects – entomologists – divide them into orders (or groups) of which Ireland has twenty-one and, of all the many different species of plants and animals that have been identified in Ireland, insects account for a whopping 60%. So far, those that have been acknowledged as individual species number eleven-thousand – and that’s just on our island – and maybe even more will be found by future generations of scientists, professional or amateur.
Emerald Damselfly
Insects – bugs – creepy-crawlies – whatever you like to call them, they are amazing creatures. They work away to keep themselves alive and produce the next generation, but without them we would be in a bad way. We would have no little beings to pollinate our food plant crops, to help feed bird populations, to break down rotting foodstuffs into compost or to tunnel through soil, aerating it in the process.
Within the twenty-one groups of insects probably the one that we all love to see the most is the butterfly. Who remembers
‘Flitter flutter butterfly,
Dancing in the sun,
Hiding in the cabbages,
Feeling full of fun’.
In Irish, the word for a butterfly is ‘Féileacán’ which appropriately translates as ‘little flying creature’. Soft, silky wings, each with a dusty covering of millions of coloured scales lift these creatures as adults, having gone through four life stages to reach adulthood. Firstly there is the tiny egg, secondly comes the caterpillar, then that transforms into the chrysalis stage from which the butterfly emerges, thrusting its way out to spread its brand new wings, ready to lift into the air.
Speckled Wood
Of the thirty-five species of butterfly in Ireland, some are more commonly seen than others. There are eight different species of white butterflies and they’re not all easy to tell apart, in fact, as kids we called them all ‘cabbage’ butterflies because they laid their eggs on the underside of those green leaves. It was when the caterpillars emerged, with a taste for coleslaw, that the leaves could be turned to lace!
Then there are blue butterflies, for instance the Common Blue, pretty little insects that you might see on a stroll along a coastal beach where the female lays her eggs on the yellow flowers of Bird’s-foot-trefoil. The male and female are quite different – he is the bright blue creature whereas she has more brown in her wings. In springtime, another blue butterfly that often visits our gardens, the Holly Blue lays her eggs, singly, at the base of Holly buds and in autumn she chooses Ivy for her second brood of offspring. Many butterflies only lay one egg on a single plant because if they laid two or three, the first caterpillar to hatch out would eat the other eggs. Charming.
If you think of brown as a dull colour, you might like to have second thoughts should you happen to see a Brown Hairstreak butterfly, particularly if it is feeding with its wings closed. This is quite a rare creature, mainly to be spotted in the Burren and parts of east Galway. Woodland habitat also has its favourite brown butterfly – the Speckled Wood. This is quite a common, dark-brown insect with cream-colour spots on its wings. If you can get a good look at these little beings, either with a hand lens or by taking a photo and magnifying it, you can see that their bodies are covered in downy, silky hairs that help to insulate them.
The brighter and more colourful butterflies are perhaps more familiar – for instance the Small Tortoiseshell – that’s the little lad or lass that likes to overwinter behind a curtain or on top of a cupboard. And then there’s the very handsome, Peacock butterfly. Its distinguishing features are the large, conspicuous eyespots on each of its orange-brown wings. These are meant to deter predators by making them think they are the eyes of an enemy. Possibly the largest of the species is the Red Admiral, a really gorgeous insect with black wings marked by bands of red and splashes of white.
In the last few decades, our resident butterflies have been joined by a few species from outside the country, notably the wonderfully named Painted Lady and the Comma, both looking as if they are here to stay.
Comma
Mystery of mothers
As a child, I only remember moths as nuisances that ate holes in woolly jumpers but my view was entirely changed a few years ago when I watched an entomologist open a moth-trap (licensed by the NPWS) after it had been placed overnight in a small woodland. There were some real beauties, drowsy little nocturnal beings that sleep during the day.
Apart from the fact that there are far more moths than butterflies in Ireland (over 1,400 species of moths against 35 of butterflies), some are absolutely stunning. Often as big as butterflies, you might ask what is the difference… well, firstly their antennae which, in butterflies, end in club-shaped tips whereas those of moths are feathery. If you came across them side by side, at rest, you could see that butterflies close their wings together but those of moths remain open and spread. Moths are not the easiest to find as they’re awake when we are asleep but sometimes, on a summer night with a window open and the light on, they find their way in and they are totally oblivious to the fact that you are up close to them, admiring their beauty. I’ve only seen a few handfuls but each one caused an intake of breath. There was the Transparent Burnet in the Burren, a super black and red power-dressing cousin to the Six Spot Burnet; the Humming-bee hawk-moth as it hovered across the shingle in County Wicklow, feeding on the nectar within the flowers of Kidney Vetch. Then there was the Magpie moth that slept on our bathroom window ledge and the surprise Gold Spot moth that I found among the nettles in the wild patch of our garden and the Narrow-bordered Bee hawk-moth that loved the catmint. And their caterpillars are pretty amazing too – for instance the Elephant Hawkmoth with those gorgeous false eyes, guaranteed to frighten off any would-be predator!
Delightful dragon and damsel flies
Dragonflies and their close relatives, damselflies are an absolute delight when you catch sight of their colourful and delicate hovering or as they dart across water like flying jewels, shining in the sunlight. One way to tell the species apart is to look at their wings when they are at rest – dragonflies keep their wings open, straight out from their bodies, whereas damselflies fold theirs down against their narrow little bodies. Damselflies are far daintier and smaller than dragonflies, and the position of their eyes is also different. Dragonflies’ eyes meet at the top of their heads while damselflies wear their eyes either side of their heads. With just twenty-four species in Ireland, both of these groups of aquatic insects are very delicate and vulnerable to being predated upon by birds, spiders, frogs and newts. They typically spend one to two years of their lives as aquatic nymphs, needing good water quality to survive to adulthood.
Shield bug
Another member of the insect world that I am always glad to see is a shield bug, a small creature that lives in a variety of habitats such as woodland and grassland where it feeds on the sap of plants by using its tube-like mouthparts to suck in the fluid. With seventeen species in Ireland, they are relatively large insects measuring around 7 or 12 mm from top to tail with long antennae and true to their name, their bodies are mainly shield shaped. Frequently seen creeping through long, dry grass, they can also fly. They are often be identified by the host plants they feed on, species such as the Gorse shield bug and the Hawthorn shield bug, both insects that I came across in County Wexford.
Deslime of grasshoppers
Sadly, I don’t hear grasshoppers as often as I did in my childhood, that summer sound that I took for granted a long time ago. Now I have to find a dry, country meadow in order to try to hear it again. In Ireland, there are just five species of grasshoppers and then there are smaller cousins, groundhoppers – two species – and bush crickets – five species. Stridulation is the word for the way that some of these insects communicate – grasshoppers do it by rubbing their long hind legs against their wings. Those legs are pretty powerful, equipped with very strong muscles to ensure they can jump an enormous distance, relative to their small size, up to thirty inches which is massive and for comparison, if I was to make the same leap, I would make it from one end of a football pitch to the other in just one jump!
‘Ladybird, ladybird,
Fly away home
Your house is on fire and
Your children are gone.’
We used to chant those words, holding a little ladybird on a finger and blowing gently, lifting it up until it opened its wings and soared away into the sky. It was usually a red and black creature, probably the 7-spot ladybird as that species is widespread across our island, usually found on herbaceous vegetation. Useful creatures, they feed on a wide variety of aphids, such as greenflies. In latter years, I have learnt that there are nineteen different species of these little creatures in Ireland, some small, such as the 22-spot ladybird, a mere 3-4mm long, which I found under the leaves of Hogweed, one of its favourite plants.
Yellow ladybird
100 native species of bees
Bees make up one of the largest orders of insects. At present we have 100 native species with 80 being solitary bees and 20 being bumblebees. Most of the bumblebees are easy enough to identify, especially in early spring when queens emerge from their winter burrows to seek nectar and pollen. The study of bees is a fascinating project and in order to get help on identifying these insects, and many others, there are several excellent swatches available from the National Biodiversity Data Centre such as Bees, Dragonflies & Damselflies, Ladybirds, Butterflies and Bumblebees.
Visit https://shop.biodiversityireland.ie/collections/swatches.
Further reading:
Insects of Ireland by Stephen McCormack & Eugenie Regan.
The Irish Butterfly Book by J.M.Harding – Email: jesmondmharding@gmail.com
