There are believed to be around 10 quintillion individual insects alive on our favorite planet. That’s a 10 with 18 zeros behind it. Approximately 55,000 species of insects can be found in Canada; the giant water bug is most likely the biggest in our country. Around 90 percent of bird species rely on insects as food during some part of their lives. It’s believed that insectivorous birds around the world eat 400 to 500 million metric tons of beetles, flies, ants, moths, aphids, grasshoppers, crickets, and others. There are numerous places around the world where people get their protein from consuming insects as part of their overall diet. On the day I took these images, I enjoyed a few hours watching several species of birds, including the Yellow-rumped Warbler, making lunch of the insects fallen in the air and on the water.
