Bagging a Midget

I'm not referring to some below average height Monarch. Last Friday evening a local recorder Hazel Graves posted some leaf mines on our VC55 Facebook group that she believed to be Phyllonorycter pastorella. I confirmed that these did indeed look right, that there were no previous VC55 records and that this was a species only added to the British List in 2014. The post did not give any details for the record at that point. Given that it was a likely VC55 first I suggested posting to the British Leafminers group for confirmation, whilst also asking for the details.

By early afternoon on Saturday, I'd not seen a response and so decided to go out and have a nosey around at a likely site. I figured the Soar Valley was as good a place to check as any, but I was short on time so needed somewhere I could park up and check out quickly. Narborough Bog and Everard's Meadows are closer to home but would need a bit of a walk before hitting likely prime habitat, whereas Aylestone Meadows is a little further but I could be searching within a couple of minutes of parking up. So off I headed, and literally five minutes after parking I found mines on a big hybrid crack willow of some sort. I carried on searching and within half an hour or so I'd found it at three spots alongside the canal, all in the same tetrad and all on long-leaved crack willow type trees. Whilst I was out, Hazel posted some details: actually found the previous weekend at - Aylestone Meadows, albeit further north closer to the King Power stadium but within the same tetrad as those I found. Confirmed by Rob Edmunds.

I collected a handful of mines in the hope I'd find one tenanted. I ended up with a couple tenanted with fresh pupae intact, and a couple vacated. Here's an example showing the relatively large mine with a single crease and feeding marks on the upper surface:

When backlit, the pupa is visible in the mine laying pretty much parallel to the crease, with all the frass piled up at the other end.

I was confident that one would emerge fairly soon, and have been checking them every morning, late afternoon and again before going to bed. Last night, I found one had emerged at some point during the evening ....

Phyllonorycter pastorella - needless to say a new moth for me

Not a typical shiny Phyllonorycter with white streaks and strigulae, but quite smart all the same. I mentioned this being added to the British List in 2014 - that was when mines were found in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. Hence the daft (unused) vernacular Royal Midget. Since the weekend, after alerting other leaf mine recorders, it's been found near to Burbage which is much further south and well away from the first site. I suspect this will turn out to be fairly well spread and established within a year or two.

I also found some mines on Ash at last after having had a blind spot for them for a long while, and then found more on Sunday during a bit more square-bashing.

Cone and vacated cocoon within of Caloptilia cuculipennella at Aylestone Meadows

Early-stage leaf mine of Caloptilia cuculipennella at Stapleton

Blotch mines of Gracillaria syringella at Stapleton

Square bashing

There are a handful of leaf-mining species that are so ubiquitous that any square with no records of these is likely (though not 100% certainly) to have no records of any leaf-miners. So the following was shared with recorders, showing all VC55 tetrads with leaf mine records of Parornix anglicella, Stigmella aurella and Lyonetia clerkella combined:

On Monday I headed out for a couple of hours or so in the middle of the day to respectfully avoid the box shuffling and do a bit of square bashing. My plan was to find something in the two blank squares in SP58, and then head across to SP39 and at least cover off the squares that were fully or mostly in VC55 (alongside the Warks border). I wasn't going to traipse all over pathways and farmland - this was going to be a quick hit by stopping on roadways and verges, a quick 15 minutes or so survey and move on.

A squint at the map suggested that one of the two squares in SP58 would be a bit sparse with only one roadway through a corner, but the other looked a fair bet. This turned out to be as expected, with 13 species found in SP5684 but only 3 in SP5884. Amongst these were nothing unexpected or notable. 

I then headed along the A5 to SP39 with good intent, only to find that the further west I went the greyer and eventually wetter it became. I'd not bothered at all to check the weather forecast. I turned off the A5 into SP3296 and pulled up just outside of Witherley. By then the drizzle had turned to rain and then stopped again. A quick look around yielded 10 species quite easily, before a light drizzle started again. Back in the car, and I headed into SP3098 where I noted an amusingly named King Dick's Hole. I stopped near a junction just west of Ratcliffe Bridge and found a slightly different mix of species, 11 in all including Bedellia somnulentella and Chrysoesthia drurella. After a couple of sarnies in the car, in another shower, I headed east along the road through Ratcliffe Culey across to Upton in SP3698. From there I intended to head south-west towards Atterton and then south to Fenny Drayton - hence covering the five main squares. The weather though had other ideas and within five minutes of getting out of the car at Upton (during which I picked up 6 species) the rain properly set in and I lost enthusiasm. 

Overall I added records to five previously blank tetrads, with 48 records of 23 species in total. Had I managed to find any tenanted mines on oak it could have been more, and if there been any birch, beech or apple. I'll head back over to some of these squares again at some point for a better look.

View north at SP57148422

View north-north-east at SP31919979

View north-north-east at SP36399970

Chrysoesthia drurella

Bedellia somnulentella

I also found quite a few Stigmella mines on Alder at Witherley - sadly though all vacated so indeterminable. Certainly one I'll be looking out for in the next few weeks.

Earlier in the morning, I'd emptied the garden trap and grabbed a few snaps. The catch included another garden tick that I've been expecting after recent colonisation and spread - a Cypress Pug sitting on the egg boxes propped up against the outside of the trap. I thought that would be the only highlight, but on lifting out the funnel there sat a spanking Vestal - only the second for the garden (first was in 2013).

Cypress Pug

Vestal

Satellite

Whilst grabbing some foliage from the front garden border to plonk the Cypress Pug on, I stumbled on this larva which I'm going to try and rear far enough to ID ....

"I've been a long-term disappointment to myself, but it hits like a hammer when I'm that to someone else. And the circle doesn't fit its little square, it bulges with opportunity. Bulges"

One Liz Out / One Liz In

As a mark of self-respect, I've managed since 08/09/2022 to avoid the onslaught of the televised mourn-hub. I've also avoided posting anything remotely related to it all on Facebook or Twitter, as well as here. Until today, when my Mum came around for Sunday dinner. It's fair to say that my Mum does not share any of my political beliefs, thinks GB News is better than the BBC because it's 'not biased', and thinks the Royals are fascinating. The TV inevitably ended up showing the endless stream of 'mourners' filing past a flag-draped box, along with hilariously dressed military changing guard every twenty minutes or so in a clockwork Trumpton fashion. Whilst this was on, we naturally ended up in some debates of no consequence. Like, for example, "what period are we in now the 'Elizabethan era' has ended?". I pointed out that we had not just exited the Elizabethan era, in the sense that such things are generally used with historical perspective - a longer perspective than a week or so. Whilst Googling 'Elizabethan era', amongst the default questions was "What was life like in the Elizabethan era". The answer: "It included a small but powerful population of wealthy nobles, a prospering middle class, and a large and impoverished lower class living in miserable conditions". At which point I conceded that we certainly had been living in the Elizabethan era.

Meanwhile, Less Trust has had the easiest week of no-scrutiny imaginable after being voted in as PM by a tiny fraction of the population. When we come out of this cloud of public woe, perhaps later this month, I expect she will make Thatcher look like a 'woke lefty' and Johnson look competent.

On my way home from buying the components for our roast dinner today, I took a very quick detour to a side road into an industrial estate in Whetstone alongside the M1. I knew there were a few Sycamores along there, and I was looking for a leaf mine I'd not seen yet. It didn't take long to find a few, including one tenanted on the same leaf as a vacated mine:

Stigmella speciosa - tenanted mine on Sycamore

Amongst a few other leaf miners recorded, and also on Sycamore, I found Horse-chestnut Leaf-miner (Cameraria ohridella). I've found this on Sycamore before at Croft Hill, but there it is amongst plenty of Horse-chestnut whereas the mine found today is in a stand-alone area with no Horse-chestnut present.

The garden trap has not yielded too much lately, with low numbers and classic autumnal species appearing ....

Sallow

Brown-spot Pinion

Frosted Orange

Beaded Chestnut

Lunar Underwing