www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/08/26/windscreen-phenomenon-car-no-longer-covered-dead-insects/

Come to think of it no! Once, a few decades a go, after a bit of a trip countryside you'd come back wondering how any air got through the radiator. And now all you ever get on the windscreen is dust. Or am I mis-recalling the past as it retreats?

You may be right.
Not long back from driving down to and across Tasmania on various sea-kayak trips. I listened to a ABC RN story about the windscreen test on the day I drove Sydney - Port Melbourne, so I checked carefully. No insects. Nothing really from Strahan to S of Hobart along the forested Lyell Highway. A few flies and native bees around dead penguins and seal skulls occasionally encountered near our kayak bush camps, opposite massive fish farms, if that means anything for insect counts. Tasmania was very yellow everywhere, including all of Bruny Island.
Back in Victoria, I helped out at a cattle stud, 60km E of Wodonga - and weren't too bad around cattle at all (48C in the shade), a few cockroaches in the imported hay... can't be good, moving insects cross-country like this ?
Insects were noticed at night en-masse at a brightly-lit large servo in Holbrook, but not on my car after driving Young - Bathurst - Katoomba on the way home.
Drove 90km last weekend Richmond (NW Sydney) to Lithgow area to go windsurfing via hilly Bells Line of Rd; nothing.
I do count about 20 insects in and around the light fitting above me at the end of this hot day.
Is the small insect count drought related?

When we drove from Perth to Esperance last Nov i could hardly read the license plate after the trip. It was ridiculous amount of tiny bugs

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320718313636#!

Report basically says that our current system of consumption based growth is killing insect level ecosystems as well.

Unfortunately for my kids most of the other ecosystems are insect dependent including our growth based fossil fuel dependent paradigm

All good. Economy is kicking along okay.

We're fakked.

Artificial light is the equivalent to genocide for some insect species.

If you look at areas of earth from a satellite you will see how many lights are on in cities and towns , any area like this will be almost devoid of bugs as they swarm to the light until they die.

Deep in the outback when you turn a floodlight on you should see how many millions of bugs beetles moths etc etc came swarming in.

Anyone who has ever worked at nifty minesite has to remember the sound of half a foot of bugs crunching under their feet as the walk past the workshop lights.

No shortage of good or bad bugs in the Coffs Harbour region.
There has been an increase of plague pests like red shouldered monolepta and rutherglen bug accompaning storm/wind fronts , the nature of their arrival deems parasatoid remedies invalid and leaves most farmers no choice but to use feral organophosphates - where everything dies

"It has also been suggested that cars have changed shape over time, and are now far more aerodynamic, meaning fewer insects are hit."


Still cleaning bugs off the Ol' Troopy windscreen...

All the bugs are falling off the edge of the flat earth before they can reproduce

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Razzonater said..


Deep in the outback when you turn a floodlight on you should see how many millions of bugs beetles moths etc etc came swarming in.

Anyone who has ever worked at nifty minesite has to remember the sound of half a foot of bugs crunching under their feet as the walk past the workshop lights.

When I went on a trip up around Kununurra a couple of years ago, I had a flood light hung from a tree, but we ate about 20 metres away. The flood light had a swarm of insects under it, a huge mass, yet we ate in comparative comfort free of bugs. Good thing we didn't eat under the floodlight.

I remember seeing a bird on the road, then 5 minutes later it started cooking on the radiator

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rod_bunny said..
"It has also been suggested that cars have changed shape over time, and are now far more aerodynamic, meaning fewer insects are hit."


Still cleaning bugs off the Ol' Troopy windscreen...

Just did 6000 clicks over Xmas qld and nsw, still plenty of bugs on my windscreen and radiator. 80 series land cruiser.

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slammin said..

rod_bunny said..
"It has also been suggested that cars have changed shape over time, and are now far more aerodynamic, meaning fewer insects are hit."


Still cleaning bugs off the Ol' Troopy windscreen...

Just did 6000 clicks over Xmas qld and nsw, still plenty of bugs on my windscreen and radiator. 80 series land cruiser.

It's your fault then.