Its a funny time of year right now, we’ve still got some of our classic summer wildlife about including plenty of dragonflies and damselflies, I spotted these darters on the fence near the pond dipping platform, always a good spot to look for these insects as they bask in the sun to warm up.
We’re also getting some more autumnal wildlife, with migrating birds like redstarts (seen in the hedges near Pickup hide), spotted flycatchers (by the pond dipping platform), whinchats (on the flashes) and an osprey (flying over the visitor centre) all seen this week. Plus the reserve is cram jam full of berries, there are blackberries, elderberries, haws, rosehips and sloes hanging from nearly every hedgerow. I love this time of year, picking blackberries is great fun, and its a great way to get the family out enjoying the best of British wildlife, the incentive of a blackberry and apple crumble at the end is surely enough to get most people out of the house. I am always conscious of making sure I leave some berries for the birds, after all, the berries are a vital source of food for them. There are always the ones you can’t quite reach, a bit too high, or too many nettles or thorns in the way, they are the ones the birds can have.
Another common sight at Fairburn Ings at the moment is this peculiar looking thing., nearly always on dog rose branches.
This is what is known as a robins pincushion, it doesn’t have anything to do with robins though, although the image of a robin doing a bit of sewing sounds like something out of a Beatrix Potter story. This ball of fluff is a gall, created by a gall wasp called Dipoloepis rosae. The adult wasp lays its eggs on the leaf bud of the dog rose in spring, the gall is created as the eggs hatch and the larvae emerge, in order to protect the larvae. The larvae will emerge as adult wasps next spring. The gall itself is a distorted leaf, the result of a chemical reaction in the emerging leaf or bud. The galls start off green, but at this time of year they start to turn red. The adult wasp is pretty small, females are about 4mm (0.2inches) long with red-yellow abdomen and legs, the rest of the body is black. The males are a bit smaller with yellow legs, but you are unlikely to see a male as they make up about 1% of the total population of this type of gall wasp. This is one of over 1000 species of gall wasp world wide, with around 300 species present in Europe.