Exactly 2 butterflies today, both Speckled Wood.

I added a new spider, the Common Sun-jumper (Heliophanus flavipes), on one of those nameless yellow composites.

Two new galls were found on English Oak (Quercus robur) leaves, the Smooth Spangle Gall and Oyster Gall, caused by the agamic generation of the gall wasps Neuroterus albipes and Neuroterus anthracinus repectively. 

To get an understanding of the meaning of ‘agamic generation’ I found the life cycle of these gall wasps described very simply by NatureSpot. 

On another Oak tree I found several leaves that have extensive brown pitted areas (left panel of the image below). These are not leaf mines as I had initially thought, but rather as a web search revealed, due to leaf grazing. They are most likely caused by the larvae of the Oak Longhorn moth (Carcina quercana) which always spins a white silken tube along the midrib of the oak leaf in which to reside when not out grazing the leaf. I believe it is the remnants of one of these tubes that can be seen just to the left of the leaf midrib next to the grazed area (right panel of the image). There also appears to be a cluster of empty egg cases between the white and grazed areas, but these may be totally unrelated.

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