Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Marsh Lane
Having spotted a hobby as I drove along Marsh Lane I paid a short visit to the Jubilee River. The wheatear was just east of the road.
Three hobbies were catching insects over the long island. Trying to get all of them in one shot was the way to madness; in fact trying to get one of them in one shot (and in focus) was the way to madness. 
A cuckoo, a chiffchaff and a blackcap could meanwhile be heard singing; and two common terns cruised by heading west. A sedge warbler sang in the open.
At home, something really tiny landed on a rose leaf while I was removing aphids. This insect was so small that the only detail I could see with the naked eye was the ovipositor, making it a parasitic wasp of some kind.
This is where a digital camera and computer come in handy, capturing details you would otherwise despair of being able to make out.
(I eventually found the wasp in Field Guide to Insects of Britain and Northern Europe by Bob Gibbons. It seems to be Torymus nitens, a parasitoid (I think) of the Cynipid Wasp which is itself a parasite, causing galls to form on the underside of oak leaves to feed its larvae. The wasp above can pierce the gall with its ovipositor to lay its own egg in the developing larva.)
// posted by Christine @ 9:26 AM 
