If you go down to the woods today...

A short trip to the woods today yielded over 40 species of leaf miner, with many families represented.

There were thousands and thousands of Phyllonorycter coryli on Hazel, with P. esperella on Hornbeam not too far behind.

Many other species were well into the high hundreds: Caloptilia syringella, Stigmella tityrella, S. hemargyrella, Phyllonorycter messaniella and P. maestingella included.

Some of the highlights included:

Elachista gangabella


Stigmella splendidissimella

Stigmella aceris
Euspilapteryx (Eucalybites) auroguttella
Stigmella samiatella
Phyllonorycter platanoidella
Parornix fagivora
Phyllonorycter mespilella

Early stage excesses

To say that the last few weeks have been productive in terms of early stage finds - mainly leaf miners but also cases and galls - would be an understatement.

Whilst we all seem to have suffered a dearth of adults to the traps this year, with tales of crashes in numbers of usually abundant species becoming clear as we all start to analyse the 2012 figures in detail, here in East Kent I am falling over early stages at every turn.

By way of illustration, here are some figures from the last 15 days i.e. October so far:

213 out of 320 total records (66%) are for early stages
4907 out of 5160 total individuals(95%) are for early stages
75 species recorded as early stages

The most abundant early stages are:
Phyllonorycter coryli - 1126 mines
P. platani- 1505 mines
P. corylifoliella - 355 mines

Other finds include Phyllocnistis xenia, Stigmella aceris, Bucculatrix thoracella, Phyllonorycter platanoidella, Coleophora laricella, Ectoedemia heringella, Parornix fagivora, Strophedra weirana

Phyllocnistis xenia


Stigmella aceris


Parornix devoniella


Stigmella microtheriella

Dave