Colm O'Regan: Using an app to count insects has allowed me to be more mindful and still

Colm O'Regan: "Now I know the ragwort will raise hackles. Poor ragwort. One of the few weeds that’s against the law in this country because it sickens cattle." Picture: Chani Anderson.

It's odd when things that look bad are a good sign. These days I’m trying to look for good signs.

Trying to be a glass-half-full person. Even when the glass is bone dry. And anyway, technically, there’s water vapour in there, so it’s just a matter of needing condensation.

The drop of water this past while has been the front of the car. It has more dead insects on it than other years. That’s a grim thing to celebrate. But if there are more dead ones, there are more live ones.

For the past few years, it has been the slowly growing drumbeat. “Where are all the insects gone? There aren’t even any flies these days. Remember the windscreens of our youth?

Or remember when you could leave a window open and a light on inside and the place used to be carpeted with moths. Not any more.

But whether it’s a one-off or winter frosts or a wet March or a warm April or tariffs, or just people using less roundup and mowing less, this spring is more buggy than before.

And I’ve started counting them. With a thing called a FIT-Count. It sounds like one of those videos where a musclebound 60-year-old is doing exercises in a chair but it’s actually far more fun.

FIT is Flower Insect Timed Count. You just spend 10 minutes looking at a flower or flowers and the 50cm x 50cm square around it and count the insects that visit it and put them into categories on an app or on a piece of paper.

It’s mindfulness with a point. It’s a curiously rare thing. To just stare at something and be still. Pretend they’re your neighbours and you’re mad curious to see who’s visiting.

Or someone’s putting up a planning notice.

You look at the flowers that are native like buttercup dandelion, hawthorn, bramble, lavender, hogweed, knapweed, white clover red clover, thistle. And ragwort. Now I know the ragwort will raise hackles. Poor ragwort. One of the few weeds that’s against the law in this country because it sickens cattle.

The national flower of Isle of Man, and long ago people believed the fairies travelled around on it, but when your cattle could die from it that’s not going to cut any ice. But the ragwort debate is for another day.

The FITCount app thing doesn’t expect you to know all the names of insects, just the rough categories.

The first FITCount I did was fairly humdrum. Not a single miserable mite in 10 minutes. 'That’s it, ' I thought, the planet's gone.

But then, a few weeks later, I did another informal stare at a flower (I didn’t have a way of recording it on me) and I started to notice things.

There were no bees, but it was other ones that caught my eye. Things like the hoverflies and the droneflies. They fly like drones but without recording you against your will. And a few ordinary flies popped in. Blow flies I found out after. And beetles also do their bit. And the more you look, the more things you see.

I’m not leaving rotting food out just to meet single bluebottles in my area but rather like when I stopped hating dandelions and wasps, I now am not bothered by bugs. They’re essential. It’s like when you get grown up and start to eat foods you were afraid of as a child, like tomatoes. Life seems richer when you see everything.

And then unfortunately you kill some of it on the front of your car. But lookit, the birds have been pecking away so it’s an ill wind as they say. Or Avensis.

Find out about YOUR 10-minute FITcount programme which just involves doing almost nothing at biodiversityireland.ie

• Colm is in Coughlans on May 25. Tickets coughlans.ie.