Category: David

These acorns, on oaks in Bantock Park, are contorted because a wasp has laid an egg in them. The wasp was an oak knapper wasp, and the acorns have become oak knapper galls. There’s twenty or more different species of wasps which lay their eggs in oaks, each of which produces a different type of gall. The most familiar is the so-called oak-apple.

I’ve visited different sections of the park a couple of times since the knapper galls were pointed out to me. Every single oak I’ve checked has had every single acorn (at least those visible from ground level) visited by a wasp.

Finally, some way into August, a few days of dry and hot weather meant a few more insects started to appear. Buddleias were still in flower, although just the highest and least visible flowers.

Still, at last they lived up to their name of butterfly bush a little. Several species visited, though still in small numbers. Most frequent were small peacock butterflies, showing themselves often in semi-silhouette. There was also at least one red admiral, which hid itself whenever there was a camera nearby.

Various shades of purple are a common colour among lots of the flowers of high summer. A small sample from a short walk on the Riverside Project reserve in Stratford on Avon last month.

Marsh woundwort has a name giving a clue to the medicinal properties it was presumed to have. Most teazle flowers are a delicate shade of purple, though some are so pale as to be almost white. The many species of thistle come in multiple shades of purple.

Flowering among the riverbank vegetation in Stratford on Avon, wild angelica. It can be found by the river as long as the banks are not carefully manicured.

The horns, or possibly antennae, of this tiny insect are long in proportion to its body. It was wandering around on the leaves of the tangled vegetation by the banks of the Avon at Stratford.

A pair of red kites were circling, using a thermal to gain height over the Riverside Project reserve in Stratford. By the time I’d fumbled for my camera they were quite high, so all I got was of these two shots, which I think are of the same bird. Then they had flown out of sight.