As the spring and summer progress, this first ‘mystery’ post may well develop in to a mystery series, depending on how many intriguing things I manage to find and how many I don’t manage to identify. These first mystery items were found recently when I was looking more closely than usual at Pine trees to see if I could spot any more Pine ladybirds. I did find one more of those lovely creatures but I also found these ‘things’, dotted sparsely around, attached to the Pine needles.

No amount of googling has produced any similar images or information and, when I asked for help on social media, I was inundated with helpful people saying they were Pine scale, which, after checking the lifecycle of those scales, I’m fairly sure they’re not. They look to me like some kind of egg sac or pupal case, with a tiny creature growing and developing inside.

In an attempt to solve the mystery, I plucked a couple of Pine needles, with the things attached, off one tree, and I’ve brought them home, stuck them in a jar on my kitchen window sill. Whether or not something will emerge remains to be seen and, rest assured, I will definitely write another blog post if that does happen. In the meantime, if any of you has any bright ideas, please do share them in the comments.