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 ....
So, those Pammene spp. - all P. suspectana. I shall keep looking over the next
couple of weeks, P. albuginana has to be out there.
You may recall that we had some work done in the garden last autumn. We've
been planting and organising it a fair bit over the last month or so, and I am
looking forward later in the year to watching pollinators on some of the
flowering plants I've put in. I've also created a quick mini-pond that I hope
will bring in aquatic wildlife, using a 100litre planter on legs as I have no
intention of creating a place for frogs - just the inverts. It's not ready to
share, I'll give it time to mature a bit first.
Here's a couple from last night's garden trap:
May Highflyer
Cochylichroa atricapitana. Yes, you're right, it did used to be
Cochylis atricapitana before the taxonomists got involved. Again.
Here's some random Japanese metalcore what I found on the internet to
cunningly match the blog title. I like it.
Remember that
Tufted Duck with a nasal saddle
that I saw in January? Well as it happens it has been seem again on 28/04/2022
at Lock of Skene near to Aberdeen, just over 500km away ....
I've been dangling a pheromone lure again, and ended up with x1 Pammene sp. in
the garden on 30/04/2022 and x3 together at Croft Hill yesterday, all to the MOL
lure. The latter were in an area predominantly full of oaks and with no ash in
the immediate vicinity raising hope that they may be something different, but
having looked at the hindwings of a couple I think they are all Pammene
suspectana - gen det will confirm, and potentially from thereon one to ID on
external characters.
As far as I can make out both P. suspectana and P. albuginana, which are
similar externally, share the dark blackened costal streak to the hindwing,
but otherwise the hindwing of P. suspectana is more uniformly grey and P.
albuginana has a paler central area making the costal streak stand out even
more.
P. suspectana allegedly feeds under the bark of ash, but it appears that is a theory and is not actually verified/proven or at least may not be the whole story.
The garden trap has been out over the last three nights; I nearly didn't bother as it's been a bit cool and breezy overnight but whilst numbers have not been
great I did pull in a couple of these ....
Mullein
I had one on Tuesday night, which by the time I'd finished photographing it and it
had been in and out of the pot/fridge a couple of times had slight damage to the
left forewing tip. So another one following on last night that was fresh as a daisy and fully
intact was clearly another individual. Which is great, seeing as the last garden
record was way back in May 2005. Actually I've never seen an adult anywhere
aside from my garden, all other records I have are larval.
A few other bits but nothing too exciting. I'll be trying pheromone lures over
the BH weekend hopefully.
Waved Umber
Spruce Carpet sl
It is very probably a Spruce Carpet on markings, but there are strong
suggestions that antennal characteristics of males need to be checked to
reliably separate Spruce and Grey Pine Carpets so I will start checking the
odd ones I get. Except this one was female.
I had a quick search for a suitable link to some music, as nothing came
immediately to mind apart from 'Mull of Kintyre' that was never going to
happen. I found an album called All The Right Doors by The Mullins. Never
heard of them, and had a quick play .... a load of Christian nonsense that
made McCartney seem viable. So here's a much more tenuous link ....
Last week we managed to nip down to Devon for a couple of days and stay with
my in-laws in their new (moved last year) property in Fremington, which is
west of Barnstaple along the Taw Estuary. We couldn't have picked a better
couple of days weather-wise with glorious sunshine and decent warmth. I should
have packed a moth trap but thought better of it, there will be chances in the
future I'm sure. But when I do I think it could be interesting to see what
turns up, as within spitting distance of the garden is a large marshy field
that is part of the Fremington Local Nature Reserve called Lovell's Field
(cyan dot), a small tidal tributary (yellow dot) which becomes Fremington Quay
where it meets the Taw Estuary (green dot).
Around Lovell's Field are a good mix of broadleaved trees, though a lot of the
oaks in the area are
Lucombe Oaks
- a naturally occurring (not in UK) hybrid between Turkey Oak and Cork Oak.
There are loads of them in Devon; I have no idea though if those around here are
self-seeded (unlikely) or planted a couple of hundred years ago (very likely!)
but they do have some sort of preservation order on them I believe.
Although I did not take a trap, I did take a pheromone lure. Within
minutes of arriving we were lounging in the garden in sunshine with a cuppa,
chatting away whilst I had one eye on a red rubber bung. Around half an hour
later I was dashing off to get my net and shortly afterwards showing everyone
this ....
Cracking Emperor Moth
I also hung out a couple of lures in pheromone traps hoping the local oaks
would hold interesting Pammene spp. but no joy on that front.
We had walk around the area, and though there was not too much of birding
interest along the tributary I did find a cracking Greenshank.
Fremington Quay
Whilst walking back along the edge of Lovell's Field, I found masses of
Three-cornered Garlic and some dipteran mines on Hart's-tongue Fern that are
immediately identifiable ....
Chromatomyia scolopendri
We also had a walk around nearby Instow. Nice to get on some sand and enjoy a proper
(Hocking's) ice cream. It's not quite a beach though, the sea is a very long way off: this is where
the main estuary splits into the Taw heading east to Barnstaple and the
Torridge heading south to Bideford. In the far distance in the shot below,
there is Northam Burrows on the left (with Appledore mid-distance) and
Braunton Burrows / Saunton Sands on the right. In between is a massive expanse of tidal sands.
There is a new album from Orbital out later this year, celebrating 30 odd
years with new versions and remixes of classics. Some tracks are already
available, and I like them.
For 22 years, I have recorded and enjoyed moths with Adrian Russell. He was the VC55 County Lepidoptera Recorder when I very first got interested, a role that he effectively took on from c1992 to try and give some structure and organisation to recording in VC55. I first corresponded with him in late 1999 with some moth records from my garden, and from early 2000 we exchanged many phone calls, 1000s (literally) of e-mails and enjoyed many nights out mothing along with the occasional social. We'd not done anywhere near as much out in the field in the last few years due to health issues and covid restrictions, but we did get in a couple of nights last year and a joint leafmining foray in mid-November.
Adrian was very helpful to me in the early days with his time, ID help, access to sites and generally being a model County Recorder. Over the years as my experience and knowledge grew, particularly on micros, Adrian was happy to ask me for help and guidance and over the last few years I've been helping reduce his workload by giving ID help to other recorders and helping with record verification. I've held the emergency back-up files for the VC55 dataset and masses of associated files for the last few years, with the last update coming through as recently as 05/04/2022.
This weekend I'm a bit lost and numb, saddened and shocked by the news that Adrian died on Friday after being in hospital all week. I knew about his illness, knew his prognosis and knew that he was unlikely to see out the year, but no-one could have foreseen such a sudden deterioration in his health.
Adrian had been working for a number of years on a book covering the full history of Lepidopteran recording in VC55 along with the status and details on all moth and butterfly species. It was a project that he'd essentially been researching for and thinking about for years and it is a shame he never got to finish it or see it published in the way he intended.
We shared many nights around a light, many early morning surprises going through traps with camping stove coffee and bacon butties, and added many species and dots to the VC55 dataset in the process. It will be very strange indeed running traps out and about without Adrian around, either sharing the experience or being the first to know of any exciting news.
A typical early morning - which of the x17 traps to empty first ....
