Sunday 30 August 2015

Acorns and wasps

Our local meadow has a few oak trees in the middle and walking by them yesterday we noticed some of the acorns looked deformed - a lot of them in fact.  There is nothing quite as striking as a mature oak tree and I often use these trees as a means to break up the meadow when photographing it over the seasons so I was a bit concerned about these growths.  Back home and of course to the internet and it appears these are caused by oak gall wasps, or rather their larvae. Now nature is nature and all things are bright and beautiful but if there is one thing I dislike it is wasps, and if there is one thing I dislike more than wasps it is larvae (I can't bring myself to say the M word!) so I didn't want to hang around on the websites with photos in case I came across something that would put me off my dinner! However, I did find out that gall wasps have very complicated sex lives alternating years of asexual behaviour and they can reduce the crop of acorns which could have a knock on effect to the local  squirrels and jays, but in essence they don't damage the trees so hopefully these oaks will be there for many many years to come.

Acorns deformed by gall wasp larvae

Spotted flycatcher

As we walked around our local meadow yesterday afternoon I spotted a bird up high on a branch that I didn't recognise straight away. We were a good few meters away but my little Lumix camera has a great zoom so I grabbed a few shots before it flew away. From a distance it made me think of a swift or a house martin but when it flew off I could see it wasn't either of those. Once I uploaded the photo I checked out the RSPB species identifier but nothing was coming up that matched so I trawled some google images until I found something similar and, after double-checking back on the RSPB site, I have decided it was a spotted flycatcher. If you look closely at the photo you can see it has lived up to its name.

Spotted flycatcher, Cambridgeshire, UK

Spotted flycatchers are on the RSPB red status list and it was a new spot for me so chuffed I managed  a photo too! They arrive in the UK during late April and early May and will be off again in September so I shall try and remember to watch out for them at this spot next summer.

Not another blog?!

One of my other blogs is about walking and I have found that as I walk (and photograph) I have become much more aware of the world around me again and I love it! My husband hunts down the tiniest of insects for me to get macro shots of and together we watch the crimsons and burnt oranges of a stormy sunset over our local fenland.  As a child I went on nature walks at school - do they still? I will certainly be taking my new granddaughter out for rambles to find skeleton leaves, conkers and buttercups when she is big enough. As my grandma did with me, I will teach her the names of flowers and birds, and I will hope that even if she abandons nature for a little while as she grows up and becomes distracted by other things, she will one day come to appreciate our time outdoors and the beauty of nature around her.  At the moment she is still tiny and our talks are more me making basic animal noises and her looking at me open eyed and a little bit confused, but it's never too early I say!

A sunset this week taken from our house