A little over a month ago a rep. from the County Extension Office came to the local rifle club for a presentation.

She started off by asking, " Who remembers going on road trips when you were a kid?"

"Who remembers always having a bug sponge (dad kept one in the cars) to scrub off all the grasshoppers, junebugs, lightning bugs, bees, moths etc. every time you stopped for gas?" Screens in front of the radiators too...

"It's been gradual but have you noticed a change?"

I had to agree, it's changed a lot since I was a kid going on road trips with mom n pops in the 60s.

She wanted to remind us at the club to not wipe out the good bugs and pollinators at the same time we target pests.

I still get bit by skeeters and chiggers, deer flys , nats and other stuff but have you noticed a change too?

They are at my house...I'll post a pic of my truck grill when I get home...

I haven’t. I can hardly see out my windshield for all the splats and I just washed it a week ago. And every nook, cranny, and out of the way place in the plant I work in is full of June bugs, spiders, and moths. We got hopper toads that stay under the porch light and get fat snacking on junebugs, some of them must weigh a pound they’re so big.

Also remember that there was a time that windshields were flat glass, with no smooth airflow.

The aerodynamic properties of modern cars is where they all went.......right on by

Covid got 'em.

You must live in a sheltered spot because out here there a whole lot more than should be in a dry place.

Maybe it’s a N.C. thing, but I have also noticed a bit of a decline. I’m in sales and I log a lot of miles on the road. This time of year I really accumulate a lot of bugs on the front of my truck, if I get home a bit late. The last several years I have noticed less of this. Right now the bugs are really sparse because we are really dry.

I'm only 45 but the "bug sponge" - not a thing in my family and we drove the UP a lot. I rode around with my grandfather in a Cab Over Ford - a rolling brick - no "bug sponge".

I get a ton on my motorcycle (why I also wear a helmet - it's nasty) and some on the car but as other's have mentioned, modern cars are much more aero and create air channels that simply push the bugs out of the way as the car goes through.

I get her sentiment but not buying it 100%

If you want to see bugs, get a Toyota FJ. I've never seen anything collect bugs the way that FJ windshield does.

I washed my truck yesterday and still didn't get all the bugs off of it.

Head into Florida in May and/ or October (or thereabouts). The two flights (per year) of Lovebugs will refresh your memory quickly.

Here in Montana, at least my part, we aren't seeing many bugs yet. I think it has been too cold for them so far. On the few warm nights, the June bugs are starting to show up!
No bugs this morning-----43 degrees !
My wife has been driving to Billings several days a week and so far, the windshield on her car has been clean!

PS If we have grasshoppers like the last few summers, we will have bugs. !!

Depends on the amount and when we get rain.

Only critters I'm not seeing anymore, are centipedes. They were common when I was a kid - haven't seen one here in decades.
I believe most insect and small animal populations are down, substantially, due to the ongoing drought.
Even the rattlesnake population seems way down, compared to ~20 years ago.
Pocket gophers, pack rats, 13 striped ground squirrels, rabbits, also.

Very dependent where you drive.
Grew up on a branch of the river, it is buggy as hell driving up
to the folks place. One of the worst places around here.
Always blamed it in the crick.

Now, I'm a dozen miles away, downstream. The river is at the bottom
of the hill, follow it to work everyday. Get very few bugs.

The sponge thing sounds like BS.
Carry a bucket and soapy water too. Where did you get water if not?
Ever been around dead buggy windshield washer buckets?
That better be a disposable sponge, or it's gonna soon smell
like rotting fish if you don't get it clean. How you store the sloppy thing
so it dries? If it don't, go back to rotten fish smell.


Running 48 states and Canada, the worst bug hatches I ever saw
were in Ohio on SR2. They were in swarms that looked like smoke,
Completely covered the front if the truck. Not BS exaggeration!
The truck was black and bloody, you could write on it with your finger.
Ran out of bug juice, every gas station had cars waiting to clean
their windshields. No idea what bugs they were, but they looked like
decent sized gnats.

Exactly correct!

The drought map shows where insects are numerous, and where they aren't.

I live on Lake Michigan - few years back we had a hatch of bugs (no clue what they were) that were just black balls in the air. Couldn't hardly see through them and if you hit one in the car, you had to down shift to make it through. THICK

Depends on the weather, one thing I've noticed over the yrs is that there will usually be an explosion of small butterflies, which usually happens before we get a tropical storm or hurricane.

Song Birds here are the issue....They have been on a downtrend for years. Took a 3 mile hike last week. Half of it on a woods trail. Saw one Blackbird. Come out to the open fields and saw 3 Crows and some Robbins. Yard has some Crows, an occasional Jay and some Robbins. Look out a window and you are more likely to see a Groundhog than a Bird. Barn down the road used to have swallows by the hundred swarming...Now nothing.

I hope you see lots of them really soon.

Do you think that's because we're not managing forests correctly? Not allowing enough disruption to create the undergrowth needed for renewal/small critters etc. I'm thinking along the lines of the videos Ruffed Grouse Society puts out. Was that woods trail super mature woods?

We just had the coldest spring on record at the Airport in Seattle.
It never got up to room temperature.

I miss the many Monarch butterflies I would see as a kid during their migration. I know a lot of it is due to herbicides and loss of milkweed, but I hope they are making a bit of a comeback. Starting to see more of them each year.

Yep, same up here !

This was washed clean, on Sunday !

.this. aerodynamics makes a lot of difference

Ain't that the truth. No washing fluid squirters and upside-down wipers, too.

Have noticed it hunting sometimes.
The woods are dead.
Some crows, a hawk on occasion. Not much else moving.
Might see a dozen small birds in a day.

Indiscriminate and irresponsible use of pesticides and herbicides. Killing native weeds in favor of imported grasses and lush, weedless lawns and yet we wonder why we don’t have the pollinators of years past? The only herbicide I’ll use extremely sparingly for weed control in the gravel drive is glyphosate and that is for spot treatment not wholesale broadcast. Insecticides are something I avoid, especially chemical pesticides. I’ve used BT for specific applications during tent caterpillar infestation years but that’s only been needed once in the 10 years we’ve been here. I embrace the dandelions and other native “weeds”, most of which are edible in some form or fashion. The blackberries and salmon berries have their place in our landscape as well. I decided long ago that I wasn’t going to “fight” native weeds and use poisons to go to war with nature.

If you kill the primary food source of beneficial insects and spray pesticides in your attempt to kill the “bad bugs” don’t be surprised when you don’t have anymore beneficial insects either.

You sure about that comment? Many plants have been here so long and are so ubiquitous that we often mistake them for being native.

PS- The definition of a weed is just a plant (species) growing where we don't what it to grow...

Herbicides, Insecticides, Fungicides, Rodenticides, Nematicides, Avicides, etc are all PESTICIDES!

Colodog: It is the start of "bug season" here in much of Montana.
My Varminting friend just drove here from the west coast and his car was covered in them - he followed the Clark Fork River for about 125 miles to get here.
Washin'em off before they get baked on helps.
I live on a small elevated plateau that gets a fair amount of wind and to date (25 years now) I have NOT been bit by a mosquito in my home or in my yard, where I spend a LOT of time.
Flies do NOT like windy places either - I have discovered.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

We have bugs, field scouting for weeds this morning and discover this.

That is our spring wheat field on the left, neighbor's mustard on the right.





They must really like the mustard, I'd say half of the field is gone.

BINGO!

That's why we have almost no bugs anymore here. We are in the worst drought in 1,200 years and have little to no bug hatch. The sagehen, chuckar, and quail numbers are dismal, partly because the grasshoppers are what keeps them alive through the summers.

Our local claim to fame with the EPA is that we have sixty different species of mosquitoes.

Lately, the deer flies have been more if a problem.

No skeeters on my front porch, very few bugs of any description, hottest/driest spring I can recall.

Four out of five young lost in my martins, local mockingbirds have raised only one young all year. Ain’t seen any fledged Western kingbirds or scissortails.

We live in a heavy farming area. Lightning bugs are a thing of the past here. Crop dusters and spray rigs take care of them just like the other insects.

Well, I got about 7000 in my bed yard.
Plenty grasshoppers, crickets, etc, etc...to mess up a windshield!

This year on the west side of MT, the bugs have either drownded or froze. First mosquitoes DID attack me after sunset last night. But they are definitely the first of the year.
Last year the hoppers wasted much of eastern Montana, it was just insane how thick they were. My truck stunk SO bad and was so filthy I had to get some icky old towels and "sop" the front end of the truck to re-hydrate the bug cooze. Yech.
So no, I haven't really noticed much of a decline.

I've got bugs and weeds. Y'all cmon.

I just got back from a drive out North of town and never saw a grasshopper or a bug and it is so green out that the rocks are green. Also the ranchers are all out cutting their dry land Alfalfa. I guess the 2 1/2" of rain we got last week topped it off!
I hope last years drought doesn't repeat itself. Tight now we have over a half year's average moisture. 7" so far.

Apparently insects are in decline at an estimated rate of around 9%. Some sources have it higher.

June bugs are scares to say the least. When I was a kid they were everywhere. Now I can’t remember the last time I saw one.