Pollinators

Who comes back first when the flowers do.

They come back with the flowers

A lawn supports almost nothing. A meadow is a food web. Here's who arrives, roughly in order, once the first blooms open.

The regulars

bumblebees     first in, working poppies and yarrow
honeybees      follow the mass of open blooms
hoverflies     yarrow and daisies, all summer
butterflies    meadow browns, skippers, blues
moths          the night shift nobody watches

The number

A single square metre of mature meadow can host forty pollinator visits an hour in high summer. Your lawn managed two.