Pan-species appreciation

Highlights from a productive few hours of pan-species appreciation at Esher Common on Tuesday included Cyclosa conica and Agalenatea redii, two fantastically striking looking spiders that have managed to evade me up to this point. Fresh 'oak apple' galls caused by larvae of the tiny wasp Biorhiza pallida are now appearing on most of the oak trees, and at ground level the larvae of Lathronympha strigana can be found feeding within spun leaves of St. John's Wort.

Cyclosa conica

Agalenatea redii

Biorhiza pallida

Lathronympha strigana

 This Eriocrania swept from birch saplings on the heath is a good candidate for sparrmannella, one of the latest flying species in the genus.

It's been a tad too dry recently to appreciate bryophytes at their best, but rooting around in some of the damper, shadier parts of the heath turned up the conifer-loving liverwort Calypogeia muelleriana and the ever common Oxyrrhynchium hians.

 Calypogeia muelleriana (Mueller's Pouchwort) 

Oxyrrhynchium hians (Swartz's Feather-moss)