A blazing start to October will this week turn to a more traditional autumnal month, with forecasters predicting snow in the UK before Christmas - yes it's just a couple of months away!
So, it's time to put away the shorts and crop-tops and dig out the woolies and hats with ear-flaps. If you're unlucky, that favourite winter wooly may have holes in it, courtesy of some hungry moths. Our conker trees aren't faring much better, they too are under attack from moths.
The horse chestnut leaf miner moth was first recorded in eastern Europe and has spread rapidly across the continent and the UK.
Its caterpillar lives in the leaves of the horse cheshnut, leaving tell-tale brown speckled leaves. While it's not enough in itself to kill the trees, it does weaken them, leaving them vulnerable to other infection or climatic stresses. Once grown, the caterpillar emerges to become a 5 mm long moth (pictured right). These intrepid die-hards have marched across Europe from the Balkans at a rate of about 40 miles a year, sometime hitching rides in cars, trucks and trains.
A study is underway in to their spread and control and there's light at the end of the tunnel; some natural controls have been discovered! A tiny parasitic wasp that eats the caterpillars and our own great tits and blue tits. There's only anecdotal evidence so far about the involvement of the birds, but it could help explain why they're doing well, while other insect eating birds are struggling.
If tits have discovered a taste for this moth, then there are things individuals can do to help stop the leaf miner destroying our conker trees. Putting out seed always helps, but what you plant and the way you look after your outdoor spaces is crucial.
As we head towards Feed the Birds Day, we're challenging Londoners to get creative and come-up with some bird food recipes to help our feathered compadre's survive the cold weather. In return, they'll then be able to help us, by gobbling-up bugs and beasties that threaten our environment, like this leaf miner. Imagine autumn without conkers! No thank you.