I reached the Downs this morning with a song bouncing round in my head from the year I graduated from university – this will give away my age. I was hearing Maddie Prior singing the opening line from a 1973 Steeleye Span song, “One misty, moisty morning, when cloudy was the weather”. It just described perfectly today’s weather.

I have seen a lot of Common Banded Hoverfly (Syrphus ribesii) around in the past week or so, especially near dogwood. Now I know why. I located a larva of S. ribesii on a Common Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea) leaf. The significance of this is that there is an aphid associated with dogwood the nymphs of which are a primary food source for the larva. A very short search found some Common Dogwood-grass Aphid (Anoecia corni) on the underside of a leaf in the very near vicinity.

On the same dogwood I also found the leaf mines of the leaf-miner fly Dogwood Leaf Miner (Phytomyza agromyzina). Other leaf mines photographed were Nut Leaf Blister Moth (Phyllonorycter coryli) on Common Hazel (Corylus avellana) and Apple Leaf Miner (Lyonetia clerkella) on a Wild Cherry (Prunus avium).

A new fungus was found on the trunk of an uprooted tree, one of the bracket fungi, possibly Blushing Bracket (Daedaleopsis confragosa), while in the old sheep enclosure the latest new growth is of a Dryopteris sp. fern.

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