It has been a month since my last post as the glorious dry warm weather meant that I did lots outside rather than sitting indoors writing a blog post, but a few coincidences have inspired me to write about sawflies.
In the garden, one of my gooseberry bushes has been mostly reduced to a skeleton of its former self, and in spite of waking past it most days, I failed to notice the hordes of caterpillars eating the leaves. Being green (like the leaves) they are well camouflaged so it is easy to miss them until the damage is done. Most of the caterpillars have now been picked off and left for the birds to eat.
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| Left - gooseberry with leaves, middle- leaves have been eaten, right- the culprits |
The caterpillars start at the bottom of the bush and eat their way up. They are the caterpillars of Gooseberry Sawfly, though I have never seen the fly, just the caterpillars. Apparently, sawflies are called that because their ovipositor (egg laying appendage) is saw shaped.
A similar fly lays its eggs on the flower called Solomon's Seal. I have just checked my plants and they are fine just now, but I have seen the caterpillars in previous years. The fly drills little holes along the stem to lay its eggs.
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| A row of empty sawfly holes and the caterpillar |
The flies seem to come and go unnoticed, but I saw one that could not be missed. It was sitting on some insect netting that I was about to put over my veg. It couldn't be missed as it was an inch long! It was also rather sluggish and stayed put while I took photos and then moved it elsewhere. It wasn't actually any safer as our resident blackbird then nabbed it and fed it to its youngster! I looked it up and it was a Birch Sawfly.
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| 25mm long Birch Sawfly |
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