This is really a review of the galls I’ve found this year but the letter G simply had to be about my first ever confirmed Goshawk sighting, so K is for Knopper is my alternative lead in.

Knopper galls, like the one shown above, did feature in one post this year, Acorns and galls on 1 October, but there were many other galls, most of which were new finds for me. February saw the year off to a good start with galls on Yew trees caused by a tiny midge (Galls: Taxomyia taxi, 9 February) and galls on Hazel caused by an equally tiny mite (Galls: Phytoptus avellanae, 20 February). In June, it was a small bug that was creating eye-catching galls on the leaves of an Ash tree (Galls: Psyllopsis fraxini, 12 June), and, in July, aphids were the gall causers on a Poplar tree (Galls: Pemphigus spyrothecae, 17 July). In that October blog Acorns and galls I mentioned above, as well as the knoppers, another tiny wasp had caused artichoke galls to form on the same Oak tree. And, a couple of weeks later, I found my final new galls for the year, those caused by midges on Willow trees (Galls: Rabdophaga rosaria, 17 October). All in all, 2023 was quite a galling year!