Eaten out of house and home

While trapping in Bernwood Forest on 2nd May I inspected some young birches using my head-torch and found a handful of Eriocrania larvae mining their leaves.  They included a well established mine of Eriocrania cicatricella alongside what I think was an early mine of Eriocrania semipurpurella on the same leaf.

Eriocrania mines, Bernwood 2nd May

You can just about make out the ghostly shapes of the three larvae of Eriocrania cicatricella within the left-hand mine.  Three days later the cicatricella larvae had expanded their mine well into the right hand portion of the leaf while the smaller mine and its single larva, still separate at that time, had grown only a little bit.  By today the voracious cicatricella larvae had finished feeding, having consumed virtually everything edible inside the leaf, and exited the mine to pupate.  They seem to have destroyed the other mine in the process!

Consumed leaf, 7th May

Dave Wilton Westcott, Bucks