Invasion of....what?

Came home yesterday evening to find the lawn covered in tiny holes of which I can only assume are some kind of insect. Was wondering whether someone could confirm what could have caused the damage. We had some heavy rain the preceding day and in the morning so assume this has been the catalyst. The holes are spread across the entire lawn and are little more than a fingers width and appear to only be as deep as the grass and very slightly into the soil beneath. I have taken a picture of them on a brown patch as it's easier to see them;



This on top of our current invasion of Browntail Moth Larvae decimating one of our ornamental trees along with giving me a very nasty rash the other weekend. I'm kinda wondering whether we are going to have a plague of locust soon

 

Maybe birds eating leatherjacket larvae (daddy longlegs) from out of your lawn? That would explain the brown patch and birds like soft soil after rain,
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Brown patch is because that's where the dog likes to urinate Try as I may to get here to do it in a discrete unused area of the lawn she decides right outside the doors is ideal!

It's definitely not birds doing this damage. When I say it's the entire lawn I'm talking around 1200sqft of lawn, pretty much covered as you see in the picture! this is something that's come out of the ground, by virtue of the fact there is a slight ring of soil round each hole and the grass has been pushed upwards! Definitely something emerging!!

 

I know the birds can be a pest at times but to me that's a good sign @scatz ,I once had my lawn decimated by Cranefly larvae eating the roots of the grass and the lack of Starlings didn't help either but the Starlings are back and chomping away which is saving the lawn

 

My friend had something similar when she lived in France, apparently it was "mining bees" not something I have heard of but apparently they dig a hole and leave eggs there?

 

Have you tried dog rocks? they work wonders as long as you remember to change them

 

Looked up ground wasps/bee's etc but they all have some type of burrow! These holes are not burrows.

I'm not convinced it's birds as we rarely get any visiting the garden! A couple of Magpies when they're nesting, a couple of wood pigeons and a couple of blackbirds........that's all we've ever seen in the garden. Also, if it were birds it would have to have been a whole squadron of them to create the amount of holes I'm talking about (thousands) in the space of a couple/few hours we had been out!

 

Please check online before doing this, but I read somewhere it's only female dogs urine that scorch the lawn. It may be true because I have no marks from Baldrick (male) Apparently, if you put a teaspoon of tomato ketchup in their dinner it prevents the scorching, but please do check first as I can't remember where I got the information from, it's a long time ago x

 

I'm sorry, I've lost the plot here - definitely not tomato ketchup, I meant tomato juice - apologies x

 

Lol tomato ketchup works as well @LyndaG so you havent lost the plot

My mum has to use dog rocks as the dogs wont eat their food if it has tomato ketchup or juice on it lol considering they are labs and eat pratically everything going trust them to be fussy about that

 

Must admit I would have said starlings.

They stick their beak in and then open it to pull out the leather jackets.

A flock of them can cover a large area.

 

It's a type of fly that makes them holes I'm sure of it.
We get them at work every year around the same time in the same place.
It's always where there is bare soil they burrow.