Here is a little question to get you thinking of long hot summer days – if you’ve been driving for more years than you care to remember, cast your mind back. Do you remember driving through agricultural areas and finding your windscreen thickly coated with defunct insects? I certainly do – it seemed as though you had to wash the bugs off several times a week so that the windscreen wipers didn’t spread the poor creatures into a distasteful smear which got in the way of a clear view as well as looking disgusting. This doesn’t seem to happen so often these days. Is the change due to a shortage of bugs, or is it the design of windscreens that has changed? The ‘Splatometer’ test Investigations have raised the issue that climate change and over-use of pesticides has indeed decreased the level of certain types of insects. A crude ‘splatometer’ test was carried out by the RSPB some years ago, where they counted the number of bugs that had been collected on vehicle number plates. They recorded