Appropriately enough for someone who likes finding leaf mines, the first insect I spotted this year was a leafminer, the larva of the moth Phyllonorycter leucographella. I blogged about these back in November 2020 (Leafmines: Phyllonorycter leucographella), when, as now, I found the mines on the orange-berried variety of Firethorn (Pyracantha coccinea). As the entry on this species on the British Leafminers website explains, the autumn generation of these larvae, like this one, overwinter in their mine, before pupating and emerging in the spring.

The larvae can also be found on many other plant species: the photo below shows the same moth species mining the leaf of a Plane tree in October 2021. In this case, you can see the empty pupal case still in the mine and the exuvia poking out at the top of the mine, from where the moth has emerged.