#365daysofbiking Bugging me:
September 26th – The unexpectedly fine, warm weather has been bringing out some great examples of bugs looking for a last yahoo or somewhere to hibernate until spring.
On my way to work, this lovely shield bug decided to drop in and say hi.
What a great little creature it is!
June 13th – A wet, miserable day, with the weather only clearing in the early evening. I headed out on surprisingly puddle-free towpaths into a glistening, dripping wet green.
I went out with the intention of comparing the Nikon to the Sony on the same/similar shots. The Sony may have a great interface, but the image quality in poor light can’t hold a candle to the Nikon. Interesting.
The flag irises are doing well this year – huge beds with lots of flowers all along the canal through Brownhills and up to Chasewater. After a brief break the gorse is flowering again, and the ox-eye daisies on Chasewater Dam were a delight.
After most of the day stuck indoors, a real tonic.
May 29th – I don’t know why, but I find these oak galls a bit horrible. They are distorted leaf buds, into which a wasp injects it’s egg and a chemical which causes the tree to grown the gall instead of a leaf stalk. The larva lives within the growth, feasting on it. When mature, the wasp eats it’s way out and the life cycle continues.
This tree on Clayhanger Common is peppered with these tumour-like galls – they look like fruit. The gall doesn’t harm the tree particularly, but it’s a very visible parasite.
there are many different types of gall wasp, all with different methods and growths. I’ve not seen this one before, and am unsure what it is specifically.
Nature can be very odd sometimes.
July 15th – This journal illustrates many things, but mostly, it illustrates my ignorance.
Three weeks hence I stopped to admire this horse chestnut tree in Festival Gardens, Lichfield, and noted how fine it was looking, laden with young fruit, and that it was showing hardly any leaf miner activity.
It is now. The leaves have been absolutely infested with it.
The leaf miner is a pain – it can cause early leaf fall and there’s speculation that this tiny moth larvae can cause poor fruit development, but otherwise, this infestation doesn’t affect the overall health of the tree. It just makes the poor thing look terribly diseased.
Next time, I’ll keep my mouth shut. Can’t help feeling I cursed my poor arboreal brother…
BrownhillsBob's #365daysofbiking 