She won’t be doing anything for a week and then we’ll have a look at the Ribblesdale Stakes at Royal Ascot

“She won’t be doing anything for a week and then we’ll have a look at the Ribblesdale Stakes at Royal Ascot.”Some trainers would not use the data sheets returned on a blood test to blow their own noses, but others are more fastidious. “Unfortunately Galatee will not be travelling to England, as she has an elevated white cell blood count,” Bolger said. By teatime, she was out of the race.
In the hours between, while the filly stood innocently in her stable, a precautionary blood test suggested some kind of infection. At 10 am, Galatee was one of 11 final declarations for the Classic and Coral made her 100-30 joint favourite with the other Irish filly, Alexandrova. Jim Bolger has been so taken aback by the progress made by Galatee this spring that her owners forked out £20,000 to supplement her to the Vodafone Oaks at Epsom tomorrow. Yesterday the unbeaten filly gave him a rather less pleasant surprise.

But Coenagrion mercuriale has suffered a 30-per-cent decline in its UK distribution since 1960 due to a lack of appropriate heathland management.* The oil beetle has one of the most extraordinary life cycles of any British insect, being parasitic on various species of ground-nesting solitary bee.But only three of the nine oil- beetle varieties once found in Britain are still resident.. Sorrow than joy may be in store for lovers of Coccinella septempunctata as the aphids it eats are being gobbled up by the Asian harlequin ladybird, introduced to Europe as a biocontrol.* The shrill carder bee was widespread in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but records suggest a decline to only one third of the previous distribution by the 1970s, with just seven sites reliably identified in the south and east of the British Isles in the 1980s.* The southern damselfly is a glorious barcode in turquoise and black. It spends eight years in a larval stage before emerging in a burst of song — but it has not been heard since 1996.* Folklore has it that the spots of the seven-spot ladybird symbolise the seven joys and seven sorrows of the Virgin Mary. Entrance is free with admission to the reserve (adults £7.25, concs £6.00, children £4.50) ( www.pestival ; 020-8409 4400; www.buglife .uk) Bugs in trouble* The New Forest cicada is one of Britain’s largest insects, black with orange stripes and lovely transparent wings longer than its body. “It’s great when you see some timid little child nervously reach out to have an insect placed on their hands and watch their look of horror turn to outright glee as it tickles around on their palms.”Pestival runs at the London Wetland Centre until 4 June.

“Everyone loves the tarantulas,” says Morell, wrangling a millipede back into its box. “It gets across the mixture of awe and fear we have looking at another fully evolved civilisation, and which outnumbers us.”On my way out, I pass a stall on which Mick Strick of the British Tarantula Society and Anna Morell of the Phasmid Study Group are exhibiting giant African millipedes, Madagascan hissing cockroaches, stick insects, scorpions and spiders. “I’ve been an entomophile since I started cryogenic experiments on ants in the family fridge as a child,” explains the curator of this evening’s creepy-crawly-themed film night, which will peak with a screening of Phase IV.”It’s the most sublime and pensive of all the sci-fi bug movies,” says Pilkington. “Do birds only make their unique and complex songs to attract mates and defend territory, or is it something more?” he asks me. He’s at the Pestival to jam along with crickets, poking a proboscal microphone into their darkened box and improvising on his clarinet “They’re amazing – tiny beatboxes. And they can hear all over their bodies! Who wouldn’t want that skill!?”It was through experimental music that Bridget Nicholls met her Pestival co-organiser Mark Pilkington. The American musicologist has made his name exploring what Darwin described as the innate “aesthetic sense” of birdsong.

It was once widespread across the south of England but is now only known to be hanging on in a few sites in Essex, Hertfordshire and Hampshire.” This jewel of a green-and-red beetle only flies for three weeks each year in May and June. “If you think you have found one,” says Watts, “please take a photo, note the exact location where you found it and contact Buglife.”Back in the courtyard, beside the magnificently mechanised Insect Circus Museum I run into Professor David Rothenberg, the author of Why Birds Sing. At the moment we’re asking people to keep an eye out for the scarlet malachite beetle. We have well over 3,000 arthropod species in Britain, but 12,000 species of our land and freshwater invertebrates are currently listed as species of conservation concern.” I ask what people can do to help. “Join Buglife,” she says, “garden organically, protect brownfield sites and get involved in some of our projects.