Bee’s knees, a gnat’s whisker, knee-high to a grasshopper, a flea in your ear and other insect idioms

Idiom a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual word

I’m fond of saying that I have been an entomologist since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, which I automatically expect my audience to understand means since I was very young.

Knee-high to a grasshopper?

What I didn’t know was that this well known phrase only dates from about 1850 and replaced the earlier knee-high to a mosquito or bumblebee or splinter. I can find no explanation as to why this change occurred; perhaps it was because someone felt sorry that the Orthoptera didn’t have any idioms associated with them as opposed to the Hymenoptera which dominate the insect idiom world.  “Rightly so” I can hear the Hymenopterists exclaiming, “after all there are more of them than any other Order” (Forbes et al., 2018).

Hymenoptera

When I go into the Entomology Lab I expect it to be a “hive of activity” where everyone is as “busy as a bee” and there is a “real buzz”.

Strangely enough, despite the hymenopteran references I would hope that my students are all working on aphids, but then some people would say that I have “a bee in my bonnet” about them and I will definitely be making “a beeline” to the aphid cultures shortly after I arrive as I think that aphids are the “bee’s knees” when it comes to insects 🙂 I can get quite

“waspish” when I hear people making disparaging remarks about aphids although I would never describe myself as getting as “mad as a hornet” over the matter. In fact I love aphids so much that if someone asks me why I do, I will never say “none of your beeswax” and you might think that I “have ants in my pants”  as I wait for an opportune moment to explain about the “birds and the bees” when applied to aphid reproduction.

Diptera

Erica McAlister author of The Secret Life of Flies will tell you that flies are where it’s at and it is certainly worth being “a fly on the wall” when Erica starts talking about flies in general.

Unless you have “the attention span of a gnat” you will be enthralled by her anecdotes. The only “fly in the ointment” is that some of her flies have absolutely disgusting habits.  Erica herself, “wouldn’t hurt a fly”, no matter how unsavoury its lifestyle. I have heard it said, that sometimes, the less strong-stomached members of her audience, can be seen “dropping like flies”.  I confess that I am a bit worried that if Erica reads this I will come within a “gnat’s whisker” of being slapped in the face 🙂 Speaking of gnats, I just found this expression in a detective novel published in 1932 (Wilkinson, 1932) “antiquated gnat of a custom”, but have not been able to find out exactly what it means and its origin – any suggestions welcomed.

Lepidoptera

No one could describe me as being as “gaudy as a butterfly” as my usual attire is a pair of blue jeans, a shirt with rolled up sleeves and a pair of desert boots, although I do have some butterfly-themed clothing.

Gaudy as a butterfly – nope

The previous sentence reminds me that I have written about dress codes in an earlier post,  and the role this might have in curing the feeling of “having butterflies in one’s stomach” before giving a talk. Speaking of nervousness coupled with shyness, something many of us feel in social situations, which can cause some of us to imbibe liquids containing alcohol, I find that even after a few drinks I am not much of a “social butterfly”, a garrulous drunk is probably the best description 🙂

Everything got a little bit hazy

Coleoptera

Now you might think that the Coleoptera, having, at the moment, the most species described would have provided us with a plethora of beetle inspired idiomatic expressions. Sadly as I “beetle along” in my “beetle crushers” I very soon come to the end of their influence on idiomatic English.  Just to make any coloepterist who might be reading this feel a bit better, the narrator in Rudyard Kipling’s Stalky & Co (a humorous novel about late Victorian schoolboys) is nicknamed Beetle, possibly because Kipling, like me, could be described as “beetle-browed”.

Beetle-browed, although my wife has been known to describe them as looking like furry caterpillars

Siphonoptera (Mecoptera)

Leaving the beetles behind us we come across the Siphonoptera, the fleas. Some people might say I have “a mind like a flea” but did you know that fleas have been recently re-classified as parasitic scorpionflies (Tihelka et al., 2020), which might make those people who say they “wouldn’t hurt a flea” think twice about using that phrase or the term “fleabag”.

Insects in general

As someone whose favourite insects are Hemipteran, I would love to say that the greatest number of insect idioms are provided by the true bugs, but that would be untrue. In general, when non-entomologists use the word bug, they mean insects in general, a particular “bugbear” of mine. I would go as far as to say that it really “bugs me”. In fact, I’d love to put “a bug in someone’s ear” about it and if I came across a journalist using bugs correctly I’d certainly go “bug-eyed”. I’m writing this in my warm centrally-heated house, feeling as

Not only snug as a bug but an example of one of my bugbears!

“snug as a bug in a rug” although once this pandemic is over I’m pretty sure that the “travel bug” will bite me, and I’ll be heading off to France to enjoy great food, good wine and plenty of sunshine.

References

Forbes, A.A., Bagley, R.K., Beer, M.A. et al. (2018) Quantifying the unquantifiable: why Hymenoptera, not Coleoptera, is the most speciose animal order. BMC Ecology, 18, 21.

Tihelka , E., Giacomelli, M.,Huang, D., Pisani, D., Donoghue, P.C.J. &  Cai, C. (202o) Fleas are parasitic scorpionflies. Palaeoentomology,3, 641–653.

Wilkinson, E. (1932) The Division Bell Mystery, George Harrap & Co Ltd, London. Reprint available via the British Library Crime Classics series

Glossary

Hymenoptera

a bee’s dick – a very small amount https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2017/08/21/a-new-cooking-measurement/

a hive of activity – a place/situation where everyone is busy

ants in your pants/antsy – agitated or restless due to nervousness or excitement

as busy as a bee – very busy

as mad as a hornet – very angry

bee’s knees – an excellent person or thing, of the highest quality

birds and the bees – a euphemism for the basic facts about reproduction as told to a child

none of your beeswax – none of your business

to have a bee in one’s bonnet – to be preoccupied/obsessed with something

to make a beeline – to move swiftly and directly towards something or someone

Diptera

dropping like flies – dying or collapsing in large numbers, giving up on or pulling out of an endeavour

fly in the ointment – a small problem which nonetheless spoils the whole plan

fly on the wall – an unnoticed witness

wouldn’t hurt a fly – used to emphasize how inoffensive and harmless a person or animal is

Lepidoptera

as gaudy as a butterfly – very colourful

social butterfly – a person who is socially dynamic, successful at networking, charismatic, and personally gregarious

to have butterflies in one’s stomach – to feel nervous/anxious/excited in your stomach

Coleoptera

Beetle along – hurry, scuttle

Beetle-browed – having shaggy and projecting eyebrows

Beetle crushers – large shoes/boots

Siphonoptera (Mecoptera)

a flea in (someone’s) ear – an unwelcome idea or answer

mind like a flea – jumping from one idea to another

fleabag – a dirty or shabby person or animal, typically one infested with fleas or a seedy and dilapidated hotel

wouldn’t hurt a flea – gentle and kind

Insects in general

as snug as a bug (in a rug) – very comfortable/cosy

bug-eyed – with bulging eyes, astonished, amazed

to bug someone – to annoy someone

to put a bug in someone’s ear about something – to give someone a hint about something

travel bug – a strong desire to travel; an obsessive enthusiasm for or addiction to travellin;

Protecting and valuing our public rights of way

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have, because of the covid pandemic, been doing a lot of walking recently. As a result I have discovered a lot of public footpaths and bridleways in the immediate neighbourhood, some of which are much more well-trodden and accessible than others.

The one of the left only became visible after I hacked back the vegetation 🙂

I’ve always been an advocate of the “great outdoors” albeit, as a child, having to be occasionally chased outdoors by my parents when they thought I had been reading too much 🙂 There is plenty of evidence that contact with nature is good for our mental and physical health (e.g. Hartig et al., 2014; Shanahan et al., 2016; Lackey et al., 2018) and this had never been more evident since the global pandemic locked so many of us into restricted areas. I’m very lucky, I’m stuck in a small hamlet in a rural area of Staffordshire.

My walking area

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, walking in the countryside became a popular and inexpensive form of recreation for less well-off city dwellers. The popularity of this activity led to the formation of several local walking or ramblers groups. Access to the countryside was, however, frustrated by the activities of landowners who taking advantage of the Enclosure Act, fenced off their land and often took ramblers to court for trespass.   In 1932, Benny Rothman, of the Young Communist League, frustrated by this, organised a mass trespass of Kinder Scout in the Peak District (regarded by the government as an act of civil disobedience).  As a result this of this and with support from leading politicians of the day, a number of new public rights of way came into being, including, the, to me, iconic Pennine Way. More recently, the Country Side Rights of Way Act of 2000, has reinforced the concept of the right to roam and the UK now allows more access to the countryside than most countries of the World. Note that the Scandinavian countries are even more liberal when it comes to the freedom to roam, something that I was immensely grateful for when doing fieldwork in Finland, as I often found myself stumbling into someone’s back garden while hunting down bird cherry trees in the winter gloaming 🙂 We are fortunate in the UK, that there exists a well-mapped, and in many cases, well sign-posted, 260 000 km of public footpaths and bridleways available to use.

A well maintained example of public footpath ‘furniture’.  The footpath itself in this case has not been reinstated by the farmer and is not very visible.

I suspect that most people, even those that use public footpaths and bridleways are unaware of who is responsible for marinating (left this in so that Emily’s comment makes sense) managing this remarkable network, so here goes.

The Highway Authority (via the local council) and the landowner (or occupier) are the two bodies with the most responsibilities.  Parish councils have some duties, but not all are compulsory and the people who use the paths and bridleways are also expected to follow some simple rules. I’ll go through what these are, one by one. 

Highway Authority

The Highway Authority via the local council must:

keep the surface of the public path network in good repair and control vegetation (other than crops) growing from it maintain bridges over natural water courses, including farm ditches

signpost rights of way from metalled roads and provide additional signs and waymarks as necessary along the route

 protect the public’s right to use and enjoy rights of way

secure the removal of obstructions, including ensuring that paths over cultivated land are reinstated and marked out after they have been disturbed

ensure that there are no intimidating notices that would deter the public from any paths

As far as I can tell, although for example, Staffordshire County Council in which I live, has a department that deals with footpaths and bridleways, councils are  not very proactive in any of the above, relying on members of the public to report any issues. For example, there are several signposts in the village in which I live that are in very poor condition, and yet in the seven years I have lived in it, the only ones that have been repaired are the ones that I have notified the council about. The take home message here is, don’t assume the council will do something about of their own bat, you need to report it, don’t assume that other users will.  Even some of the most used paths in my area have broken stiles and when I logged on to the council site, I found that I was the first person to report them, despite some of them having been in disrepair for a couple of years.

provide a minimum 25% contribution towards any costs incurred by a landowner in maintaining stiles or gates on public rights of way

One of the formerly obstructed and broken stiles that I reported last year. Now much more usable.

Next, the landowners.  According to the Staffordshire County Council web site, “The vast majority of landowners fulfil their legal duties to keep paths on their land open, safe and accessible by keeping routes clear and maintaining stiles and gates, but some don’t. The majority of the 2,000 calls we receive every year is about problems on private paths.”  All I can say is that those of us living where I do are very unlucky in that the local farmers are either not aware of their responsibilities or are deliberately ignoring them. I have listed their duties below with a commentary base donmy personal experiences over the last eighteen months.

The landowner or occupier of land must:

keep rights of way clear of obstructions

Hollow laughter on my part!

cut back vegetation encroaching from the sides and overhanging the path, so that it does not inconvenience the public or prevent the line of the path from being apparent on the ground. (On bridleways, horse riders should be allowed 3 metres [10 feet] of headroom)

Again, not much signs of this – I take a pair of secateurs with me on my walks

ensure that all field-edge public paths are never cultivated

The two examples that I know and use, were both cultivated this year and the previous one

ensure that cross-field footpaths and bridleways are cultivated (i.e. ploughed or disturbed) only when it is not convenient to avoid them and are properly reinstated after disturbance

keep paths clear of crops to ensure that they do not inconvenience users

Not something I have seen in the local area – all reinstatement is done by users walking over the ploughed field. Our local landowners are not exactly the best “stewards of the countryside”.

Two examples of paths not reinstated after cultivation by the farmer – Luckily these are well used by me and others so soon became apparent.

maintain any stiles or gates on a public path in a safe condition

Again, ample evidence that landowners are not very proactive in doing what they are supposed to

ensure that bulls are not kept in a field crossed by a path unless they do not exceed 10 months old or are both not of a recognised dairy breed and are accompanied by cows or heifers

I’m not sure what they mean here by recognised dairy breed.  Do they mean pedigree herds or just recognisable breeds? Many of the fields I crossed last year were stocked with dairy cattle accompanied by bulls. Also, several fields that I had to cross last year were stocked with fair sized bullocks, although they may have been under 10 months

ensure that any warning notices are displayed only when a bull is present in a field

I have seen no warning notices in the local area, not even for electrified fences

never keep any animal which is known to be aggressive in a field to which the public has access

I haven’t been chased yet, followed by curious bullocks, which can be a bit intimidating at times, but not chased.  I do know that some of my neighbours with less agricultural experience than me, avoid using paths when the fields are full of livestock.

ensure that no misleading signs are placed near rights of way that might discourage access.

I am happy to report that I haven’t seen any of these in my area.

Parish councils

Another stakeholder with somewhat fewer duties, but with a very important role to play is youjr local Parish council.  They can do any of the following.

maintain any footpath or bridleway within its area which is maintainable at public expense

I guess this will depend on their budget

erect lighting on any footpath or bridleway. Although the number of public paths likely to require lighting is small, lighting can be important on paths leading to a village or bus stop for example

erect notices, with the consent of the landowner, on or near a footpath or bridleway, warning of local dangers

create new footpaths and bridleways by agreement with the landowner over land in their own and adjoining parishes if satisfied that the creation would be beneficial to all or, any part of, the parish or community

This would be very useful and welcome

signpost and waymark public paths on behalf of, and with the consent of the highway authority. A highway authority can give permission for other persons such as parish councils to erect and maintain signposts on its behalf

Again this would be very useful and welcome in our area – I am, however, not sure if their budget could cover it.

provide seats and shelters at the side of public paths

These would be very welcome – so far none in our immediate area 🙂

You the user

Finally what about me and other users? As a user of public rights of way you have a duty to treat the pathways and surroundings with respect.

“The public’s right over a highway is a right of passage. Path users must keep strictly to the line of the path and must not loiter.

This one is a bit odd, does it mean that you shouldn’t have a picnic sitting on the actual path or stand still at a particular viewpoint? 

On public rights of way, you can:

Take a pram, pushchair or wheelchair if practical

Take a dog (on a lead or under close control)

Dog owners are one of my bête noires.  Thankfully most that I meet, either have their dogs on a lead or if not, hurriedly put one on. There are, however, a few whose definition of under close control, differs markedly for mine.  I don’t consider dogs that rush up and jump up at you as being under control, no matter how much their owner tells you they are just being friendly. That also goes for those dogs that hurtle towards you and then run round and round you barking.  It might also be nice if dog owners didn’t let their dogs defecate on the footpath but a good distance away from it.  Some people bag it up, which as the bags are plastic is not that environmentally friendly, especially if they don’t actually take it home with them.

I often wonder about dog owners 😦

Take a short, reasonable detour to get round any illegal obstruction.”

Sometimes this latter instruction is not that easy especially as in one case the farmer had blocked the stile, with barbed wire so I had to try and find another way to regain the path which meant walking across some of his crops.

Farm gate obscura
Once, open and shut daily,
Now long forgotten
 

I have now found eight of these – while they may not have been public rights of way, they did once allow access to the fields.  They are also, indicators of the way in which over the last fifty or sixty years, fields have been enlarged by the removal of interior hedges to cater for ever larger farm machinery.

Hedgerow remnants

Lines of trees such as those in the middle of fields are usually an indicator that there was once a hedge and that two fields have been combined into one larger field – hence the presence of defunct gates hidden inside roadside hedges.

Those gates that have survived have then had to be enlarged to cater for the larger machinery.

What can you do to help?

The UK government has set a deadline of 1 January 2026 for all historic paths to be registered for inclusion on official maps. You, as a footpath user can use existing paths and petition your local Parish Council or County Council for new paths to be registered. Very importantly, make sure that you report obstructions to existing paths when you come across them.  Don’t expect others to do so, the more of us who report blocked paths and broken stiles, the more chance there is that they will be unblocked and repaired. Also go to your local council web site and download the footpath map of your local area.  You will be surprised at how many there are, and how many have been hidden by the landowners. We need to make sure that these hidden gems are revealed.

If you want to protect and enhance our public footpath network, please consider joining the Slow Ways project, their aim is to create a network of walking routes that connect all of Great Britain’s towns and cities as well as thousands of villages. You can find out more here.

Enough writing, time to get out and do some walking.

References

Hartig, T., Mitchell, R., de Vries, S. & Frumkin, H. (2014) Nature and health, Annual Review of Public Health, 35, 207-228.

Hey, D. (2011). “Kinder Scout and the Legend of Mass Trespass” (PDF). Agricultural History Review, 59, 199-216.

Lackey, N.Q., Tysor, D.A., McNay, G.D., Joyner, L., Baker, K.H. & Hodge, C. (2019) Mental health benefits of nature-based recreation: a systematic review, Annals of Leisure Research,

Shanahan, D., Bush, R., Gaston, K., Lin, B.B., Dean, J., Barber, E. & Fuller, R.A. (2016) Health benefits from Nature experiences depend on dose. Scientific Reports, 6, 28551

Pick & Mix 58 – rewards, trophy hunting, allotments, ecosystem health, moths, grizzly bears and parakeets

Risk it for the Biscuit – The Landscape of fear – how the promise of a better meal can make some animals take an extra risk.  Link to the original paper here

Nice article by one of my former students, Tom Oliver – Nature: how do you put a price on something that has infinite worth?

Wow, this is a blistering review to say the least – Review of a book I have not read and have absolutely no intention of wasting money on!

A very balanced account of trophy hunting and the misinformation that surrounds it

Nottingham’s allotments – a valuable resource

Ecofusion is the new normal – Should we embrace our non-native species

Ecologist Yvonne Buckley asks “Can you tell the health of an ecosystem by looking inside its flowers?”

Why urban gardens are crucial for conserving bees and butterflies – and how you can help them

Grizzly bears and moths

Polly want a city? Population boom sparks call for cull of London’s invasive parakeets

Is it time to abolish Vancouver?

How about that for a clickbait title?  I was going to call it “Editors of journals with number based referencing systems – use your power to change the system” but in these days of impact factors I thought I would emulate those journals with exceedingly high IF scores, which seem to specialise in non-informative, yet grabby paper titles, and many of which persist in using my bête noire, the Vancouver style of referencing.

The hated (by me) Vancouver style

So why am I sounding off now? Well, I was just about to submit an invited review, but thought I had better read the instructions to authors first 🙂  To my horror, I discovered (yes, OK, I should have read the instructions to authors before starting to write the paper) that the journal in question wanted the references formatted in Vancouver style. I don’t have much time for even vaguely sensible numbered citation styles such as the Chicago system, but as you will already have gathered, the Vancouver style really, really, annoys me.

Source – http://www.idioms4you.com/img/angif-blow-your-top-scen02.png

Defenders of the system (and I am sure there are some) might point out that in these days of reading online,  journals such as Science,  that use this awful system have active links to the numbers within the text which bring up the citation in a separate box. This does, however, involve moving your mouse/cursor/finger to it instead of reading it instantly. As a reader I find this unsatisfactory to say the least. I like to see the authors as I read the text.  It may seem picky, but this gives me instant context.  As someone who has been around a while and usually knows the field quite well and, as a field ecologist, blessed with an excellent memory, seeing the name and date, gives me a pretty good idea of the accuracy of the citation context. Displaying references in non-alphabetical order also gives me brain ache. I visualise my brain in two ways, first as a series of file record cards and then as a series of filing cabinet drawers in which the folders (memories) are arranged alphabetically and by date. I then mentally find the right folder and on reaching the appropriate record access it.  My office may be (in)famous for its chaotic appearance, but my brain

My office – the perfect working environment (I know where everything is) 🙂

is obsessively and very neatly arranged and catalogued 🙂 as are my bookshelves and offprint collection. The office is a different matter.

As a referee, where, in my opinion, you most definitely need to know the citation context, you do not have the click and display facility that readers of the published paper have. This makes checking references onerous, frustrating and very annoying.

As an author the situation is even worse, although I guess those folk who have sophisticated cite as you write systems will laugh knowingly and make comments about being stuck in the past. What really is frustrating to me is that I have to

Stuck in the past – me?

go through the paper line by line and manually convert the author date citation in the text (I have to use that system when composing, to keep track of what I am referring to) to numbers and then if I find that I have to add a new reference or if Referee 3 demands that their papers are cited, renumber everything.  Arghh!!

It would be so much simpler if all journals used the same system, preferably that used by the journals of which I am an Editor, and as an example and to to gratuitously draw your attention to another of my bugbears, in the text, (Leather 2004) and in the reference list, Leather, S.R. (2004) Reinventing the wheel – on the dangers of taxon parochialism and shallow reference trawling! Basic and Applied Ecology, 5, 309-311.

One reason given for using the Vancouver and Chicago systems is that it saves space. This might have held some water in the days of print journals and page budgets, but now that most journals are electronic and page budgets no longer exist, it is not a valid excuse. I therefore implore my fellow editors, reviewers and authors to join me in condemning the Vancouver system and to convince their publishers to abolish Vancouver, the system that is, not the city, which I am sure is a beautiful place and well worth preserving and visiting.