Over the summer months we’ve run a series of seven expeditions in search of Fen Drayton Lakes’ top predatory land bugs. No long-haul flights to steamy tropical jungles, no film crews and no big budgets for us, but we still found far too many to include all of them in our final list of a dozen deadly bugs. TV presenter Steve Backshall would have a field day here!
Some of the predators were found every time, between 25 June and 1 September – but that didn’t diminish their popularity with the young explorers. These adventurers loved the 7-spot ladybirds and the harvestmen, and they were won over by the wolf spiders, particularly by the female spiders carrying silken bum-bags full of their eggs. I don’t think anyone had thought of spiders being caring mothers, never mind hunting in the style of a wolf.
Other predators were found only once or twice, but made a big impression with the day’s adventurers. This group included rove beetle, devil’s coach horse and soldier beetle, garden and orb spiders.
I was really impressed by the care shown by the children to avoid hurting these bugs, some of them so small that you needed a magnifying glass to see them properly. Many of the explorers were quick enough to catch grasshoppers, and some even managed to catch damselflies, dragonflies and true flies. Nothing was safe from capture!
Many of us were impressed by creatures that couldn't make it onto our final list, either because they weren't bugs (such as a couple of toads, a grass snake and a common lizard), or they weren't predators (such as an elephant hawkmoth caterpillar, a green-veined white butterfly and the banded snails).
We ended each event with a review of our expedition, and we usually had to vote off some bugs, so that we ended the day with a deadly dozen. Only once, a cold day, did we fail to reach the magic number, closing with just 10 predators.
Photo: Gill Parrish
So, here’s a list of the predators, whose popularity with our young explorers this summer, has earned them their place in the Deadly Dozen list: