Skies & Sparrows

28 December 2013

Back garden

I took the cherry gall oak leaf back to where I'd found it at the top end of the wood, depositing it in a sheltered spot right next to the oak where I'd found it. Unfortunately, during the four days that I've had it in the warmth of the studio, one of the gall wasps has emerged, leaving a neat 1 - 2 millimetre hole where it nibbled its way free from its larval home.

This gall wasp would have been one of the all-female spring generation. She'll be lucky to find her way to an oak tree. I did spot a tiny black insect walking across the white wall behind my drawing board but it didn't occur to me that it might have some connection with the gall. I hadn't spotted the exit hole at that stage and, as I remember, at 2 or 3 millimetres long at maximum, it was slightly smaller than I would have expected.

Marble galls, caused by another species of gall wasp, grew on the end of a hedgerow oak on Balk Lane.

Sparadise

House sparrows were enjoying bathing in a puddle at the top end of the lane. They love to chatter away raucously to each other in the safety and shelter of the dense square front garden hedges there. They live close to garden bird feeders, stables, open pasture, a cricket pitch and hedgerows. Pretty much sparrow paradise.

There seem to be a lot of robins around in the woods and hedges, some singing phrases of their clear, rather lonesome, lilting trills. We had two pairs - I guess two pairs, four robins in total anyway - facing up to each other across the back lawn, but it didn't spill over into violence.