... at the moment one of the biggest pests around seems to be the Horse Chestnut Leaf Miner that is ravaging those trees, devastating those in the south and midlands, but is spreading across the country at a rate of about 30 miles a year, now up to Yorks and Lancs and across to Devon.
It's a very small moth, Cameraria ohridella, that injects an egg into a Horse Chestnut leaf. The egg hatches into a grub that eats its way through the nutritious middle layer of the leaf, causing the disfiguring brown patches. It then pupates and turns into an adult moth that burrows out of the leaf to start the whole proces again.
I saw a couple of the adults in the process of emerging from a leaf today and fortunately was carrying the camera with macro lens and extension tube -
Do bear in mind that the emerging wasp is about half the size of a grain of rice, these shots were hand-held with the 100mm Macro at full stretch, with ISO whacked up to try and avoid shake and give a bit of d.o.f.
Here's another -
And three of the brown patches on a leaf - if you look at this shot there is an emerging wasp in the lower, and in the middle one you can just see a small, black hole more or less in the middle and then to the right and above that is a more jagged hole from where a wasp emerged -
All 50D + EF100mm Macro with EF12mm extension tube, laying down on the ground to try and get a bit of stability.
If you don't know the story of this moth and what it is doing to our conker trees have a look at the government's forestry site - http://www.forestry.gov.uk/fr/INFD-68JJRC
Cheers, Chris.
It's a very small moth, Cameraria ohridella, that injects an egg into a Horse Chestnut leaf. The egg hatches into a grub that eats its way through the nutritious middle layer of the leaf, causing the disfiguring brown patches. It then pupates and turns into an adult moth that burrows out of the leaf to start the whole proces again.
I saw a couple of the adults in the process of emerging from a leaf today and fortunately was carrying the camera with macro lens and extension tube -
Do bear in mind that the emerging wasp is about half the size of a grain of rice, these shots were hand-held with the 100mm Macro at full stretch, with ISO whacked up to try and avoid shake and give a bit of d.o.f.
Here's another -
And three of the brown patches on a leaf - if you look at this shot there is an emerging wasp in the lower, and in the middle one you can just see a small, black hole more or less in the middle and then to the right and above that is a more jagged hole from where a wasp emerged -
All 50D + EF100mm Macro with EF12mm extension tube, laying down on the ground to try and get a bit of stability.
If you don't know the story of this moth and what it is doing to our conker trees have a look at the government's forestry site - http://www.forestry.gov.uk/fr/INFD-68JJRC
Cheers, Chris.