when will this madness stop!!

[Karol]

Its the extrapolation to 2 tons that has me giggling. Do you know what 2 tons of insects looks like?
Elephants, on average weight 1 metric ton.
So here's a visual clue.'

If giant redwood sequoias of 6000 tonnes grow out of thin air why is it so difficult to comprehend that the carbon from four elephants worth in weight of insects gets converted back into thin air?

 

[Karol]

Even more food would be required in a colder place like Yorkshire to keep the nest warm, even if the wasp nests were highly insulated with kingspan/reticel. etc.
They would need nearer to five tonnes a season to survive.

Five Elephants worth into their nest in four months.

Which is why they don't survive and why wasp colonies die off in winter - from starvation because there aren't the elephants around to sustain their energy requirements.

 

[Beefriendly]

If giant redwood sequoias of 6000 tonnes grow out of thin air why is it so difficult to comprehend that the carbon from four elephants worth in weight of insects gets converted back into thin air?

Sequoias take over 3000 years to get that big....you say wasps convert 4 elephants worth of insect biomass into thin air in only 4 months inside a nest the size of a football. Now that's a trick Houdini would have been proud of.

 

[poshpikey]

The crows have probably eaten all the local eggs and chicks....
Another point that is often ignored is the increase in birds of prey.

 

[Goran]

The crows have probably eaten all the local eggs and chicks....
Another point that is often ignored is the increase in birds of prey.

At my place pied crow is non existent ( while I was a kid their presence was annoying - due to quantity), their place seems took over Eurasian jay.
The few pairs of ravens are ever present - that seems the same for decades, when they fly over - they " sing" as saying hello - every time.
Northern goshawk population seems as same, also of Eurasian hobby.
Owls population seems recovering after some time, happy to see them - but again not overpopulation as it seems to me.
Also what I noticed numbers of woodpeckers rapidly goes up also ( especially common woodpecker and green woodpecker - which seems recently attacked some of my hives, luckily colonies survived), also huge loss to our crop of hazelnuts they cause..
Also noticed some species of small birds which I don't remember to saw before.. In the summer few times flocks of European bee-eater fly over, but don't settle - not favorable nesting sites for them ( luckily).
Also last few seasons noticed huge decrease in numbers of barn swallows, something bad happened to them.

 

[Antipodes]

Have a listen to this bird call from the rainforest here. Recorded from the tent entrance early one morning
View attachment PXL_20201218_203308908 (1).mp4
after camping at a bee site. You may need to turn up the volume as it had flown off a bit by the time the recording started. Never heard it before and may never again! At 4 seconds and again at 17.