Weekend round-up: good variety

Added quite a few species to the year list both with adults from the garden MV trap and searches for other stages in local woodland.

The garden trap yielded new for year:

Ypsolopha mucronella

Emmelina monodactyla

plus more Agnopterix heracliana

Trunk searching in King's Wood, Challock, gave good numbers of Taleporia tubulosa cases (see below): these are very well camouflaged, but their preference for the smooth bark of Beech trees makes the task less difficult.  Also found a few Coleophora sp. cases in crevices on Beech trees.

Also searching on Broom showed that Agonopterix assimilella larvae are very plentiful right now.  The larvae feed from the safety of a larval spinning and are pretty easy to locate.

Three micro species last night

A total of four micros of three species in the garden trap this morning:

Tortricodes alternella (2)
Agonopterix heracliana 
A. alstromeriana

Dave

Another new for year to the garden

Trapped on a mild but blustery night with Tortricodes alternella new for the year list.

Dave

First February garden micros

Ran the MV trap in the garden over the last two nights and caught the first micros for February in the form of four Agonopterix heracliana, at least it's a start.

Check your evergreens

It's also worth having a close look at any Holm Oak as there are several species whose mines can be found at this time of year.

Here in East Kent I have recently found:

Stigmella suberivora - the leaf around the mine quite often dies and turns brown (visible in the picture above), making the mines quite obvious, holding up to the light will confirm presence of a mine.

Ectoedemia heringella - often many mines in each leaf, with affected trees visible from some distance due to the sheer number of mines; I have seen literally thousands of mines on a single tree in Hyde Park, London.  This one is certainly worth watching out for as, since it was discovered in London in 2002, it is known to be spreading (albeit not quite as quickly as Cameraria ohridella).

Quiet time of year but still things to be found...

Things are generally very quiet on the moth front at this time of year, particularly when it's as cold as over recent days, however there are still things to be found.

A few of my recent finds include the following:

Coleophora argentula cases on the seedheads of Yarrow - as with many of these, once you 'get your eye in' with one you tend to find several more relatively easily.

Coleophora glaucicolella cases on rush (Juncus) - there are often several of these on each seedhead and generally wherever there's rush I have success in locating these cases.  Care has to be taken in separating this species from C. alticolella; UKMoths covers the detail on this.  I find a hand lens is sufficient, the hard job is coaxing the larvae far enough out of the case to be examined in detail!