Ah, Grasshopper

[Henarar]

I really liked that.



... and that bothers you of all people? Put it up again, please, pretty please, pretty pretty please!

@farmerclare likes this one

 

[Old McDonald]

Good as it is, it is not quite my style of what I want to hear. You could put me down as a prude I suppose. It will come as sacrilege to some, but I preferred the Wurzels after Adge was no longer there.

No offence intended to anyone, especially any of his relatives, it is simply a personal opinion.

 

[The Ruminant]

Do you know, up to this year, I haven't seen a single grasshopper on our farm since the 70s. That may sound completely insane but it occurred to me as we were chatting with a neighbour around the camp fire about the stuff we did as kids and the things we saw. Dumpheads in our stream. Frog Spawn. All gone. Far fewer slow worms. Where did it go? Far less of everything but then it came to me that the humble little grasshoper, a chap who gave us so much fun as children, had just gone from our farm. Neighbour (organic) said he had plenty. Hmm.

So, what have we done on our farm, which is all grass in that time? The use of spray has been limited to knapsack efforts on tiny areas and not by me. I don't want it to happen but that's a work in progress. The only thing we have done to the land in the last maybe 20 years is to put on bagged fertiliser. That's it. A modest dose at that.

This stopped recently. I took on the farm in 2014 I think and 2015 was the last year it was applied, due to a currently existing agreement with a proper farmer who liked losing money. Last year none. This year none and BOOM. Grasshoppers. Everywhere. I had it in my head that farmers see them as a bad thing but I can't find that info. What I have seen is many more birds swooping and picking them up. A healthy feed supply at nesting time. I expect the same birds will pick off maggot inducing flies and eat worm larvae as they develop.

I find it odd that bagged fert could have such an effect. Or is it something else to do with the balance of the soil, or the way I let the grass get much longer than my predecessors before grazing?

Either way, it's nice to see the bugs back.

Not sure if this link showing a plague of grasshoppers will work:
https://twitter.com/jasonrochs/status/898278160684515329

But here's the picture from the following tweet showing the end result

 

[KMA]

Jeezus! But aren't those locusts?

 

[The Ruminant]

Jeezus! But aren't those locusts?

He called them grasshoppers in the tweet and they certainly seem to be hopping rather than flying so I think they are grasshoppers. Scary isn't it!

 

[KMA]

My understand that locusts go through a 'hopper' stage and some of those were definitely starting to fly, Hence my being pretty sure they're locusts rather than the little(ish) inch long things we have here.

 

[Old McDonald]

A bit difficult to tell from the video, but I think they are locusts at the "hopper" stage. Not enough numbers wise to be a full-blown plague locust swarm. And the field shown in the still photo is not the one in the video. The video is short - grass(?) and the still has long thicker stalks of what I think is maize that has been stripped quite bare.