I was lucky enough to tag along with George Tordoff's survey for moths on Dyer's Greenweed (a much declined plant of old meadows) on the MoD range at Otmoor on Monday. We had a great day in this fantastic habitat, and recorded both of the hoped for species - we found 19 larvae of the red data book Agonopterix atomella (mostly spotted by George!), a moth that BC take a special interest in, as it only has about a dozen UK sites, and smaller numbers of the slightly more widespread Mirificarma lentiginosella. Larvae of both species live in spun terminal shoots on Dyer's Greenweed, and can be found for a couple more weeks. If you know some patches of the foodplant, they're well worth looking out for - a bit more information about both species and their foodplants can be found on the BC factsheet here. It's worth reading the advice on IDing the larvae carefully, as there are other confusion species on the plants. We found various Cnephasia larvae, some other unidentified micros that I'll try and breed through, and lots of Orthosia larvae, all in spinnings in the shoots too.
There was lots of other excitement too. Halfway through I was very surprised to find some Narrow-Bordered Bee Hawk eggs (unusually) on the upperside of a Devil's Bit Scabious leaf. We noticed lots more as we searched the greenweed (a total of 22, all on the upperside), before George spotted an egg-laying female. When the sun came out there were several others, and we later saw another in another part of the site. This species has been expanding lately, with lots of new sites (eg. close to us in the Cotswolds) across its range, and it seems likely that this is a recent colonisation that has already resulted in a good little colony. We were also very pleased to see another Devil's Bit Scabious feeder, with the stunning Aethes piercei flying in good numbers (15 counted) around the short Devil's Bit Scabious clumps on the range itself, a moth recorded here by Martin T a few years ago.
Other interest were a couple of Foresters, Emperor Moth larvae, Aethes smeathmanninana and Twin-Spot Plume (pending a closer examination!).
George has some great photos of the highlights on twitter too. Aethes piercei: https://twitter.com/gmtord/status/1402151415770980353, and Bee Hawks and atomella: https://twitter.com/gmtord/status/1402559039909793793.
Time to start inspecting succisa sites further east into Bucks along the River Ray, methinks. What a fantastic discovery, breeding Bee Hawks!
ReplyDeleteForester is interesting - could be a new site.
It was tremendously exciting, just great to see them in such amazing habitat! I did think of your piercei site when we saw it, and wondered whether it might be worth a look for Bee Hawks now if they're spreading. George T had Forester at Otmoor when he last did the survey, which I think was the first site record at the time.
Delete