A Buzz in the Meadow is one of those books that I'd definitely urge people to just power through at first, if you decide to give it a go. I'm not quite sure exactly what happened in the creation of this book, but it feels like the author was either very rushed (possible; this is their second book, and sometimes multi-book deals are signed without a clear end game) or someone in the chain decided to make some very last-minute adjustments. Or maybe the publisher noticed a current buying trend and needed in on shelves yesterday. Who knows, but the result feels like it would have benefitted massively from another few months of editorial.
I should stress, the issue here isn't really with the content, or even the writing, but more a combination of the format and some easily remedied errors. For starters, the first two chapters are rife with grammatical and spelling errors, as well as containing similar – or occasionally exactly the same – points and sentences. But from that point on, the book gets progressively tighter, with more coherent chapters, better writing, and some genuinely interesting insights. Perhaps the very last chapter veers back towards the more well-trod side of pop-sci environmentalism, but even this is much more clearly framed, argued, and written. If I'd guess, the first two chapters exist more as an excuse for the format, which is itself a little strange.
The book is divided into three sections. I suppose these could broadly be described as "about bugs", "about plants", and "misc", but it's a weird choice no matter which way you cut it, especially because each subsequent division is about half as long as the one preceding it. That means you will forget that the book has this segmentation entirely during the first part, which accounts for just-over half of the total content.
If that wasn't weird enough, each section is divided into chapters (well, okay, that part is normal and useful) and each chapter kicks off with a diary entry from the author's time on his French rehabilitated farmland project. Ostensibly, these seem to occur chronologically, but as each one just tells you how long the author ran that day, how many dogs and butterflies they saw on the route, and often a single sentence of something unusual that caught their attention, they may not. There's no narrative progression through them. The number of butterflies sighted doesn't noticeably decline. The route they run doesn't become clearly more or less industrialised or polluted or anything. They just run, see some animals, and report it to us. Then there may or may not be some quotes from other pieces of literature, poems, plays, etc. and the chapter begins. Sometimes it starts with further anecdotes from France, sometimes it doesn't. It's all a bit mystifying, to be honest.
It feels like the author wanted to put together a book where each chapter bundled some anecdotes from their life as an academic researching bugs, bees, butterflies, and various conservation efforts. But someone, at some point, argued that there should be a clear narrative byline that tied them all together. Rather than attempting to discover one, they instead made it tangentially about the animals found on said French farm, and called it a day. There's a much better byline here about the slow decline of key insect species; humanity's biases towards conserving single, larger creatures, whilst ignoring the needs of ecosystems; or even our slow – but improving – understanding of some of the critical environmental fights that will likely come to define the 21st century. But instead, we get to a dozen or more expanded Strava logs 🤷♀️
The first couple of chapters and odd format aside, though, A Buzz in the Meadow is still an enjoyable book. If you're captivated by critters – great and small – then you'll likely learn some new, fascinating details about their lives. If you like hearing the inside-baseball of academia, there are some fun stories. And if you're interested in conservation, Goulson has been involved in some fascinating and pretty darn impactful studies. Plus, if you're brand new to any of these topics, the writing is very accessible and doesn't expect any prior knowledge, covering everything from the fundamentals up, in a pleasingly conversational tone, with lots of well-placed asides and more than a few chuckle-inducing anecdotes. Ever wonder how the Death Watch Beetle got its name?
Or, most importantly, if you want to understand a lot more about why pollinators are disappearing at terrifying rates, there's a lot of great content here. Though a fair warning: the book was written in 2014, and whilst this means some of the "hot takes" are no longer that hot, and some of the research has moved along (for instance, Neanderthal's definitely interbred with early modern humans, and the evidence suggests this was far from a one-off event), it also makes for a really quite depressing read at times. Take the chapter on neonicotinoids – the subset of pesticides that are likely largely to blame for a significant amount of biodiversity loss and continuously escalating ecosystems collapses – which is horrifying and fascinating in equal measure, but which ends on a note of potential hope... that, one decade later, feels abjectly misplaced, as the UK government continues to sign extensions to the ban that even back then experts were calling too generous and an insufficient measure.
Which is all to say that A Buzz in the Meadow is a decent book, one which could have been much better if it had been given a stronger editorial experience, but a decent book nonetheless.
Notes
On death watch beetles:
Death watch beetles are fascinatingly weird animals. They live in old, dead wood – and therefore love timber houses – for as long as 13 years in larval form, then pupate into utterly useless adults 😂 Their name comes from the tapping noise they make as they crawl around a house, looking for a mate (why the connotation of death? Possibly because the kind of house that is infested with the beetles in adult form is likely riddled with holes, poorly kept, and therefore probably has an older or sickly owner), not dissimilar to many other animals. Except, the beetle can't hear. Instead, they feel the vibrations in the wood. But their feet aren't far enough apart to determine the direction of the sound, only the amplitude, so they just have to walk in random lines trying to guess if they're getting any closer. It's the world's worst game of Marco, Polo ever 😅
On the unusual side effect of American newspapers on firebugs:
Back in the 1960s American researchers imported young firebugs from Europe for their experiments. Instead of growing into adult insects, these firebugs developed into super-sized youngsters that retained juvenile characeristics and were unable to reproduce. This never happened when the bugs were reared in Europe. The scientists eventually deduced that the cause of the problem was the paper they were using to line the rearing boxes. Bugs reared in boxes lined with American newspapers, such as The New York Times or The Washington Post, remained stuck as juveniles, while if they were reared on imported copies of The Times from the UK they were fine. It eventually transpired that a number of America fir-tree species used in paper manufacture contained a chemical that mimicked a hormone in firebugs and so caused their unusual development.
On how you can tell the kind of a pollinator a plant wants based on the flower:
Often these flowers have bilateral symmetry (rather than the radial symmetry found in the majority of flowers), a design that seems to be inherently appealling to bees. [...] Butterfly-pollinated flowers tend to be pink or red [...]. Moth-pollinated flowers, such as the white campions, tend to be white so that they can be seen more easily in the dark, and they typically have strong scent.
On how some plants appear to be almost endothermic, creating microclimates or actively outputting heat to provide better habitats for pollinators:
For example, flowers in the tropical arum lily Philodendron can be an astonishing 30°C warmer than the ambient temperature. They attract scarab beetles, which settle, feed and mate upon the lily. The flower folds around the beetles, trapping them in place for a few hours, although in this instance the beetles are presumably happy enough, for they are warm, have plenty of food and spend most of their time copulating and eating at the same time. Once the flower is thoroughly pollinated by all this beetle activity, it releases its own pollen, along with a burst of heat to warm the beetles, before unfolding to allow them to depart, covered in pollen.
On the devastating impact of fertiliser on meadows, and how rattle may be a secret weapon in fighting its use:
Once fertiliser has been added to a meadow, it is exceedingly difficult to remove it. The fertility will slowly decline if no more fertilisers are added and if a hay crop is removed every year, but this can take decades. By attacking grasses and reducing their ability to dominate the sward, yellow rattle offers the possibility of speeding up the process. [...] Pywell sowed patches of species-poor, 'improved' grassland with yellow rattle seeds, after first scarifying the surface to provide some bare ground. [...] The results were clear: the wild-flower seed mix took much better in plots with lots of rattle, presumably because there was less competition from the grasses.
On neonicotinoid impact on bumblebees:
The results were striking. In most respects the treated nests were just a little smaller, with fewer pupae and adult bees, but in the most important respect they were dramatically difference. The control nests produced, on average, about thirteen new queens. The treated nests produced an average of just two – an 85 per cent reduction. These new queens are the only stage to survive the winter, and it is queens that found new nests the following spring. All else being equal, an 85 per cent drop in queen production means 85 per cent fewer nests being founded the following spring.
On neonicotinoid impact on honey bees and a possible explanation for Colony Collapse Disorder:
In nature, bees travel kilometres from their nest in search of patches of flowers. [...] If the exposure [to neonicotinoids] was impairing their mental faculties in some way, then the effects might not be at all obvious when the bees had to fly all of two metres from their nest to a dish of honey placed there for them by the experimenter. Even a very poorly, intoxicated bee could probably manage that. On the other hand, anything that interfered with their navigation or learning would be much more likely to become a problem when faced with the challenges of the real world.
CCD is not about bees dying; it is about them disappearing. If bees cannot find their way home, then a hive will quickly empty of bees, leaving no corpses behind. Lost bees are as good as dead. Without their hive they have no purpose in life and will quickly expire. So it seems that sub-lethal doses of neonics can indirectly kill bees in the real world, whilst having no measurable effect in the lab.
On the extremely broad use of "neonics":
Neonics are sold as soil drenches to kill subterranean grubs that eat gross roots in lawns, golf fairways and pastures; heaven forbid that a suburban lawn should have a few brown patches where the roots of the grass have been nibbled – far better that the whole lawn (and any clover or dandelion flowers it might produce) be impregnated with nerve toxins. In urban areas trees are sometimes injected with neonics to protect them against pests; for example, avenues of trees in suburban streets may be treated to prevent outbreaks of aphids, which could result in unsightly and sticky honeydew on the cars below. An entire tree can be made toxic to all insect herbivores for several years to come by a single injection.
On the length of time neonics stay in the soil (specifically imidacloprid):
[Bayer] had simply sown winter wheat treated with imidacloprid for six years at two sites in East Anglia, and then measured the level in the soil the day before the following application. The data were absolutely clear – the levels simply went up and up over time, up to 60 parts per billion...
A study by Bayer scientists had quantified exactly how much of the active ingredient that stuck on the outside of crop seeds was taken up by the crop. The answer was: not very much – usually only about 2 per cent, and sometimes up to 20 per cent. [...] The vast bulk of the chemicals, between 80 and 98 per cent, were ending up in the soil. The agrochemical industry had always claimed that pesticides applied as seed dressings provide much better targeting of the crop compared to those applied as sprays, but this does not appear to be true.
Disturbingly, studies of the persistence of neonics once in the soil suggested that they could last for years. [...] most published estimates of the half-life put it at anywhere between 200 and 6,000 days, depending on soil type and conditions.
On their impact on waterways:
To make matter worse, neonics are soluble in water – they have to be, to act systemically in plants. This would lead one to expect them to leach from soils into surrounding streams and ponds. [...] Random sampling of streams in California commonly found concentrations exceeding one part per billion – higher than the [tolerance]/LC50 for some aquatic insects such as mayflies. Studies from the Netherlands suggest that heavy use of neonics on the bulb fields can lead to concentrations exceeding 200 parts per billion in nearby waterways, presumably sufficient to kill all insect life.