Big-eyed bugs and praying mantises: climate crisis drives new visitors to UK shores

Britain has seen an explosion of migrating insects – in some cases from as far as northern Africa It was a stifling evening in July and Matt Phelps was out for a stroll, when a piercing, whirring noise stopped him in his tracks.

As an ecologist, Phelps knows his fauna – and he could think of no UK creature that could emit such a sound. “It was like the classic sound effect of a cricket in a film, a beeping sort of little trilling sound,” said Phelps, who works at…