Hi. I'm not a gardener, just someone who is renting a town house who has an odd-looking pest in one of the trees beside my unit. I'd like to know what this is and how serious it is so that I know whether to advise the property manager or whether it should just be ignored.

Frankly, I don't even know what kind of tree it is let alone what the pest is that is taking up residence in it. If anyone could enlighten me on what kind of tree it is and what the pest is, I'd be grateful.

For what it's worth, I'm in southern Ontario and have checked two online government publications dealing with common tree pests in Ontario but didn't see anything that looked very much like this.