Saturday 9 September 2017

Hawthorn mines

In the absence of anything particularly significant in the garden trap (just 18 species last night, with another Lilac Beauty, a fresh Early Thorn and a battered Old Lady the only things of interest), a quick look at our hawthorn today produced active mines of Lyonetia clerkella, Parornix anglicella, Phyllonorycter corylifoliella, Phyllonorycter leucographellaPhyllonorycter oxyacanthae, Stigmella hybnerellaStigmella oxyacanthella, a mine of Stigmella regiella containing a deceased larva and vacated mines of Bucculatrix bechsteinella plus either Stigmella crataegella or Stigmella perpygmaeella (probably the latter, so I'll hopefully find an active mine in the next week or two).  Not a bad set of records for just a few minutes effort on one tree!

Lyonetia clerkella, Westcott 9th September

Stigmella hybnerella, Westcott 9th September

Stigmella oxyacanthella, Westcott 9th September

Stigmella regiella (deceased larva), Westcott 9th September

Dave Wilton
Westcott, Bucks     

2 comments:

  1. Hi Dave, I had a very quick look at the Hawthorn in my garden, but couldn't see any obvious active mines. That may be because I am not very practised at spotting them. However, I will hopefully return to the tree for a better look in the next week or so.

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  2. The number of mines must vary a lot from tree to tree. I spent more than an hour looking at our mature silver birch this afternoon, even resorting to using a ladder, and managed to find just four leaves with evidence of mines (three different species, though, so all was not lost). On quite a few tree/shrub species I often find them on leaves sheltered by others, meaning that they aren't immediately obvious when you search a branch.

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