I’m not entirely happy about bugs. Bugs are always bad. A bug is something that bugs you. A bug makes you ill. A bug spoils a computer program. A bug in the system is always bad. A bug is an electronic spy, capable of bringing down a president. A bug is a craze: a pejorative term for a hobby that won’t last: “He’s got the birdwatching bug.” A bugbear is a hateful fiend that eats naughty children: an archaic bugge is a scarecrow, a hobgoblin, a spectre.

But what else do you call them? We have no good colloquial word for the great panoply of backboneless life. Invertebrates? Too technical. Insects? Too specific. Mini-beasts? Too coy. We language-making humans haven’t come to terms with the vastness of life outside it: we do not even know what to call the congregation of insects, arachnids, molluscs, annelid worms, nematode worms and on, and on.

But bugs matter and bugs enthral. The feisty little conservation charity Buglife reinforces the point again and again. This week the organisation was closely involved in the new UK list of Priority Species and Habitats.

And while most have at least heard of the sexy vertebrates we need to look after – bittern, salmon, otter – most of us have at best a fascinated ignorance about the invertebrates that make up the web of biodiversity that keeps the planet operating.

So let us salute some of the bugs that have been named as priority species: golden-lantern spider, minutest diving beetle, iron blue mayfly, distinguished jumper, wormwood moonshiner, fancy-legged fly, blue plunderer, English assassin fly, mud snail.

I was reminded of an essay by John Fowles called Weeds, Bugs, Americans. He says: “You can’t massacre all the small nameless insect life of an area and then complain about the lack of butterflies.” Let that be the gardener’s watchword as the gardening season hots up.

There are two overlapping meanings for a wild species. The first is the meaning it has for itself: its ecology, its ethology, its conservation problems and its physiology. The second is the meaning it has in human culture.

Random example: a turtle dove is a migrant, threatened by the human of Malta and elsewhere, threatened also by changing farming practices: it has a fine purring voice that can be heard, if you are lucky, in the countryside right now. But I never hear a turtle dove without thinking of the time of content and fulfilment in The Song of Solomon: “The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come; and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”

Two wonderful wildlife books have explored the human meaning of wild things over the past few years: Flora Britannica and Bird Britannica. Both are masterworks. Now, I am delighted to say, we are to have Bugs Britannica: a book that will tell us about the human meanings of the invertebrate life of this country. Peter Marren is doing it, which means that it will be seriously good.

And you can help him. He is soliciting contributions, on names, local or specialised, on bugs in art and music, on bugs in stories, jokes and lore. Example: the ladybird is named for the Virgin Mary; the seven spots of Britain’s commonest ladybirds symbolise the seven joys and seven sorrows of Mary.

Learn more, and if you wish, make a contribution, via www.randomhouse.co.uk/ bugsbritannica. All contributions will be acknowledged in the book: so immortality is waiting.

But let me share a domestic moment. Swifts in the air overhead, screaming away. I looked up: one swift pursuing another swift. Then I noticed that the chasing swift was twice the size of the other. And only one was screaming.

It was then that the penny dropped. The pursuer was a hobby, a wild and dashing falcon that loves to have a dart at swifts and swallows. The swift jinked: “Climb!” I shouted. “Get above him!” And the swift, heeding this excellent advice, turned inside like one fighter plane eluding another, and climbed. The hobby climbed with him, struck, and struck again: but each time the swift jinked, climbed and, with a series of brave, brilliant manoeuvres, flew out of danger.

The hobby departed, disgruntled, and the swift returned to the party of swifts from which he had been almost disastrously separated. He rejoined the formation, screaming his relief, and set about the endless task of the swift: flying about, chasing bugs. We’d all be lost – we’d all starve – without bugs.

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