Monday August 27

A mostly cloudy morning with a few very light showers and a light westerly wind.

This is one of my favourite times of the year for birding, but the weather and wind direction were a potential adverse factor.

After about an hour of not even seeing a passerine migrant, unless you count the 30 or so House Martins harvesting insects in the lee of the Netherstead plantation, I was beginning to think I was wasting my time.

I eventually reached the Flash field and counted an impressive 224 Greylag Geese and 38 Canada Geese. The nearest flash contained only four Green Sandpipers, four Snipe, 23 Teal, and 24 Black-headed Gulls. I decided a token bird photograph was in order.

Green Sandpiper and Pied Wagtail

Fortunately my fortunes started to improve a little when I spotted a Sand Martin over the water, and then a few other migrants in the hedge. A Spotted Flycatcher was the pick of the bunch, which comprised two Blackcaps, two Chiffchaffs, and a Whitethroat.

Spotted Flycatcher

A Sparrowhawk stirred things up, and a Little Owl started calling.

On the walk back I turned my attention to insects, the highlight being several crickets of a species called Long-winged Conehead. This is a fairly recent colonist to the Midlands, and I only saw my first here last year.

Long-winged Conehead

Other creatures noted included at least a dozen Dark Bush Crickets, a Lesser Marsh Grasshopper, about six shieldbugs I took to be Dock Bugs, and one or two butterflies; two Small Coppers, a Small Heath, a few "whites", and three Speckled Woods.

Speckled Wood

Finally I noticed several strangely shaped growths on an Oak Tree. They were sticky to the touch, and after some very brief research I discovered they were Knopper Galls.

The Galls are produced by a tiny wasp Andricus quercuscalicis, which only reached the UK in the 1960s, but is now widespread. Apparently the Oaks manage to take these galls, which are the result of eggs laid in budding acorns, in their stride and the trees do not suffer unduly.