Hazel .... oh!

I spent a lot of time this morning looking at Hazel. Lot's of Hazel. I expect that quite literally I looked at millions of Hazel leaves. I was at Burbage Wood, a decent bit of woodland that is not really too far away but for some reason I've not been there for years. I think the reason is likely to be dog-walkers by day and doggers by night, but it really is a nice bit of woodland if and when you can avoid the unleashed and uncontrolled spaniels etc.

Anyway, last year Graham Calow found the distinctive leafmines of Paracrania chrysolepidella there. I had intended to go and have a look this spring, and remembered this when verifying recent records and saw that Graham went and found mines again a couple of days ago. As I entered the wood, I optimistically hung up the pheromone trap with the MOL lure, and then set about looking for/at Hazel. I had expected that the hardest bit of this venture would be finding a decent stand of Hazel and then being overwhelmed by masses of mines as per other members of the Eriocraniidae. Over an hour later, I came to realise that Hazel is actually abundant at this site, whereas the mines I sought are not. Not a sniff. I pulled out my phone with the intention of sense-checking with Graham what his experience was, only to see that he'd replied to an earlier e-mail mentioning the mines and that his experience was two hours to find a sum total of three tenanted mines. Great. I was about to sack it off and go to do something else when I found this pair of gems ....

Apoderus coryli (Hazel Leaf-roller)

A pretty ridiculous-looking leaf beetle, but one I'd not seen before so that was nice! It seems to be restricted to the south-west of VC55 at the moment.

Having found these beetles, I carried on with my searching of leaves. I wondered if the mines were maybe higher up than I could reach, or only on larger trees. And then I spotted one ....

Tenanted Paracrania chrysolepidella mine

Given I'd looked at so many leaves before spotting this one, I wasn't going to mess about opening the mine etc. It is clearly not common at this site, although as I've realised when back-checking tonight the mines I found are in a slightly different area to where Graham has found them, so it is present at very low density throughout the wood. I say mines, as just like busses and with a bit of rejuvenated enthusiasm, I eventually found a total of five tenanted mines. All on different trees/bushes, all at different heights (and one was too high to photograph), all tenanted and clearly not early mines.

I had thought that having seen these mines I could go and check other sites nearby and add dots, but having spent so long here I wanted to head off somewhere else and try the lure (which had brought in nothing at Burbage Wood).

Looking at the NBN maps tonight, it's pretty clear how uncommon this moth is. The dot right in the middle is Burbage Wood, with massive empty space between it and dots further east/west/south and just a single dot up in Lancs ....

Here's a classic with some proper sax appeal ...