Eggshell

In our garden (currently at least) was have a small English Oak sapling. We grew it from acorns collected when the boys were little, so c14 years ago now. It is in a large plant pot, and I regularly prune off some of the growth to keep it small. For some reason I never fathomed, questioned or was consulted about, Nichola decided a few years ago to sink the plant pot containing the said sapling into the garden border. I fully expect that the roots have long since broken out, and therefore when we finally get the garden ripped apart in about a month it is likely that the oak will be no more.

The only reason I was keen to try and nurture and maintain a small oak in the garden was to provide some handy foodplant for rearing the occasional larvae that would not take lilac or cherry leaves from the garden (my general go to leaves of choice for any polyphagous spp.), and to perhaps create a chance for some natural diversity. It has certainly been useful over the years, but I have to say that the number of larvae I've actually found on it naturally is very few and far between (unlike on the aforementioned lilac and cherry!).

Late on Saturday evening whilst sorting out the moth trap, I happened to notice a couple of batches of eggs clustered on a leaf of the oak. They almost shone out as they were quite white in the late evening gloom. I wasn't sure if they were lepidopteran or something else, but I did think it was a bad decision by whatever laid them to have them all clustered together on the upperside of a leaf on the outer side of the oak. Clear to see, easy to parasitize. I then promptly forgot about them until yesterday evening, when it was not quite so gloomy but even so the egg batches were nowhere near as bright ....

I grabbed a quick phone snap, and as I stood back and looked at the tree more closely I noticed quite a few leaves that had clearly been devoured by something ....

So something had laid a batch of eggs, and something has been gobbling up the leaves undetected - despite me looking over the tree for galls and such like recently. I then noticed a couple of hairy-edged part-eaten leaves ....

I didn't need to turn the leaf to know what they were, but I did need to look to see how many there were ....

How the chuff does a brood of at least 30 Buff-tip larvae manage to hide on an oak sapling that is barely 8ft tall. It's not the first time I've had Buff-tip breeding on one of the garden trees though. I decided that the sapling was not really suitable for sustaining all of these larvae where they will be very obvious, so I immediately transferred c20 of them onto the cherry tree on the front (where they bred before) to give them all a better chance.

This evening when I got home from work, the few larvae left on the oak were still clustered together in the same place. However the bigger batch I moved to the cherry, that were still evident this morning, have moved and I can't locate them. I'm sure their presence will become clear before long though. So whilst browsing the oak, I thought I'd look at how the egg-batch that started all of this was doing. Now, where was it ....

I spent a good few minutes looking and scratching my head. It's not a big tree, how on earth can it be possible that I can't see them. I resorted to checking the photo on my phone and tracking down the leaf. Yep - where I thought, where there is absolutely zero evidence of any eggs ....

There's not even the husks! I reasoned that whatever was in them has hatched this morning, gobbled up the shells and then moved off - but I'm buggered if I can find anything. Here's the two photos side-by-side so you can see for yourself that this is the same leaf (or assure me I've gone mad) ....

I hope all will be revealed in due course!