When is a leafmine not a leafmine?

Well, when it's not on a leaf! I'm not sure if nutmines, fruitmines, seedmines etc are valid or accepted terms.

The first one here was found by complete accident during a nice afternoon walk at Fosse Meadows with Nichola. It's one that I have been actively looking for at other times without success. Nichola was pointing out to me some pustule-type galls on Field Maple leaves and asking what they were, and as I went to look I immediately saw this:

I'm as sure as I can be at this stage that this is the mine of Ectoedemia louisella, which mines from the samara 'wing' into the seed. I promptly set about looking for more, and found none.

Earlier in the day, I went to Croft Hill and actually got my bins out and did some birding for an hour or so. Redstart was the hoped-for target, but no joy on that front. I did find x2 juv Spotted Flycatchers, x2 male and x1 juv Blackcaps, x1 juv Whitethroat and x1 juv Lesser Whitethroat that were all acting like passage birds - all within a small area littered with gorse and hawthorn that forms a sort of 'wall' along side of the hill.

I then set about checking a few trees on the way back to the car for leafmines, and whilst checking an apple tree I found this apple:

Not sure what caused this - maybe Codling Moth larvae have a nibble on the outside first sometimes, although they actually look a bit dipterous. Nothing revealed when trying to dissect the fruit.

I did find some proper leafmines during the day, including the following. I should say that these are tentative/assumed identifications, though I am quite confident:

Bucculatrix bechsteinella - vacated mines on pear

Stigmella malella - vacated mine on apple

Bohemannia pulverosella - vacated mine on apple. There is actually a very short gallery on this mine, just along the edge of the top two serrations at the top of the blotch.

Apple Leaf Miner (Lyonetia clerkella)

Tenanted mine on ?Swedish Whitebeam? - note the segmented body of the larva.

Stigmella anomalella - tenanted mine on rosa

Mining Crataegus

Here's some badly-photographed examples of the mines I found on hawthorn on Friday, all having been confirmed as what I thought they were. These also show how different species actually 'mine' the leaf:

Stigmella crataegella - vacated mine.

Gallery mine with linear frass at the start of the mine, and then coiled reddish frass.

Parornix angelicella - tenanted mine.

The larva spins a lobe over into a tent and grazes the internal surface within - will create two or three new tents as it grows.

Apple Leaf Miner (Lyonetia clerkella) - vacated mine.

Long, winding, thin frass-filled gallery mine. The only one I immediately recognised, this species mines all sorts including our flowering cherry.

Pear Leaf Blister Moth (Leucoptera malifoliella) - vacated mine.

This blotch mine just looks dark and brown without shining light through to see the whirls of frass.

Pretty sure this is also the larva of Leucoptera malifoliella, spinning a cocoon to pupate in.

And if it works, here's a quick vid of this larva in action.

I've got a few of these leaves in a container - let's see what, if anything, emerges for a photo!

Larval Life 21/08/2009

Aside from inspecting their genitalia, the only sure-fire means of separating Grey Dagger and Dark Dagger is in the larval stage. I found this Grey Dagger feeding on one of our birch saplings: If you look closely, you can see that the head capsule has broken away showing that this larva is in the early stages of moulting to the next instar (I'm guessing from second to third going by its size). Also on the same birch sapling are a fair few gallery mines of Apple Leaf Miner moths (which aside from Betula spp. obviously also feed on apple and all other rosaceous trees and bushes): A few days ago I found a small sawfly larva in my MV trap and thought nothing of it. A couple of days later I found what I thought was a very large ball of frass on the slab where I run the trap. In the neighbouring garden they have planted a very quick-growing sallow which overhangs the fence over the trapping site. I checked the sallow but saw nothing. Today I checked again and found a load of gregariously feeding sawfly larvae which I've identified as Nematus pavidus. No idea on the status of this species, but other internet images all refer to it feeding on Salix spp. They were all resting in this strange posture, and waved their back ends around frantically when threatened. Whilst these were interesting, they did not account for the large frass ball. Tonight whilst checking the traps I looked up and finally found the culprit - a huge Poplar Hawk-moth larva which I'll try and photograph tomorrow.