Birds, Leps, Observations & Generalities - the images and ramblings of Mark Skevington. Sometimes.

Monday, 7 September 2020

Green World

This evening, I finally found a leaf mine that - if I'm honest - I've wanted to see for some time but have never made the effort. In the event, I found several mines on a handful of Fat Hen plants growing just at the edge of a field entrance down the lane, less than 1km from home. This in itself probably shows that the moth might not wander too far - in 20 odd years of garden trapping, and trapping away from home, I've never had a sniff.

Anyway, here are a couple of leaves showing several mines of Chrysoesthia drurella ....

As you can just about see, leaves can hold several mines and most of the mines were tenanted. I've collected a few leaves so hopefully I can get a spanking adult to emerge for a snap.

Here's one stuffing itself inside it's green world ....



Prior to finding these, I nipped over to Burbage Common for an hour where I found quite a few other mines and bits to mull over.


2 comments:

martinf said...

Are you using a light box for these images?

Skev said...

No; the general shots of leaves showing size and positioning of mines are with a basic flatbed scanner, and the backlit shots are either using a lamp or the glass base of the microscope - nothing fancy.