23 Wednesday Nov 2022
This is my favourite time of year for leaf turning, not only because it’s the best time of year to search for leafmines but also because you never know what you might find lurking beneath. In this instance, a rosy red Parent bug (Elasmucha grisea), which overwinters as an adult bug, was hiding away beneath the leaves in a well-vegetated spot.
13 Sunday Nov 2022
‘Autumn leaves don’t fall, they fly. They take their time and wander on this their only chance to soar. Reflecting sunlight, they swirled and sailed and fluttered on the wind drafts.’ ~ from Where the crawdads sing, Delia Owens, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 2018
07 Monday Nov 2022
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I’m not actually a fan of mud. It clings to my shoes, leads to more frequent clothes washing, makes pathways impassable, occasionally causes me to slip and slide and fall over on my backside. But, when I noticed a patch of fallen leaves lying in mud, I rather liked how they looked, how the mud helped to highlight the veins. And, when I got home and looked more closely at my photographs, this one leaf looked to me like a lung. And so I manipulated the image, cropping the photo then flipping it horizontally and pasting the two parts together. Et voilà!
03 Monday Oct 2022
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British moths, leaf-mining moth, leafmines on narrow-leaved willow, leafmining moth larvae, Phyllocnistis saligna, Phyllocnistis saligna leafmines, Willow bent-wing leafmines
A new month, a new leafmine challenge, and it’s got off to a very successful start for me. But let’s start at the beginning …
Our locally based Senior ecologist with Butterfly Conservation, George, kickstarted the challenge with a couple of tweets and some photos last Friday evening:
Ok #TeamLeafmine here’s another recent S. Wales colonist to look for; an easy one to identify too. Phyllocnistis saligna mines narrow-leaved willows, unusual because it mines both leaves & young stems. 3 recent records by the Taff in North Cardiff, must be out there elsewhere!
Cocoons are formed in a turned over leaf edge, see 3rd photo in original tweet. Quite a few Gwent records from the Levels and Monmouth/Abergavenny, also new to Carmarthenshire in 2021. Must be in & around Cardiff Bay! More info here: http://leafmines.co.uk/html/Lepidoptera/P.saligna.htm
I didn’t have any firm plans for Saturday’s walk so wended my merry way along the edges of the two local rivers, the Ely and the Taff. I soon realised that this challenge will be a little more difficult than previous ones, as narrow-leaved willows were few and far between and, when found, often inaccessible. However, I did manage to find mines in two locations along the River Taff, which has encouraged me to continue my search further up the river very soon. And, though I hope to find more mines, I doubt I’ll find one of the very lovely little adult Phyllocnistis saligna moths, the wonderfully named Willow bent-wings, which you can see on the UK Moths website.
20 Tuesday Sep 2022
Tags
Barred Sycamore pigmy moth larval mines, British leafmines, leafmines on Sycamore, leafmining moth larvae, Stigmella speciosa, Sycamore leafminer
While searching out Sycamore tarspot fungi on local Sycamore trees, I’ve also been keeping a look out for leafmines, specifically for the mines of the Barred Sycamore Pigmy moth, Stigmella speciosa. (You can see the very attractive adult moth on the UK Moths website by clicking here.)
Although I’ve found the tarspot fungi, in varying quantities, on almost every Sycamore tree I’ve seen, the leafmines, though supposedly common, are not so easily spotted. Despite checking over a hundred Sycamore trees now, I’ve only found Stigmella speciosa mines in one location, where there were just three mines within the limits of my visibility. Perhaps more will turn up as I continue my search for Sycamore tarspot.
12 Tuesday Jul 2022
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British sawflies, Caliroa annulipes, larva eating Oak leaves, Oak slug sawfly, sawfly larva on Oak
Another day, another sawfly larva. This one looks more like a weird slug than a caterpillar, which presumably explains its common name of Oak slug sawfly (Caliroa annulipes). I found it fascinating to look at the veins of the Oak leaf that this larva was uncovering as it ate the tissue.
21 Tuesday Jun 2022
It’s National Insect Week here in Britain so I thought I’d share a new bug I found while checking out life on the leaves of Oak trees. And if you think today’s bug looks a bit like last week’s bug, Leptopterna dolabrata, you’d be absolutely right. Meet Cyllecoris histrionius, another member of the Miridae family. This bug species overwinters as an egg, the larvae hatch in the Spring, then the adults are active from May to July. Oak leaves are their usual habitat; there they can be found munching away on aphids and other tiny insects.
13 Monday Jun 2022
From my previous posts, including the recent A weirdness of weevils, I’m sure it’s obvious that I’m a huge fan of weevils, but I’d never given a thought to their life cycle until I found these leafmines. The mines are the work of the larvae of the weevil Orchestes signifer. The gallery mines follow the edges of Oak leaves before terminating in a small blotch. At that point, the larvae make themselves a case by cutting out the circular blotch, and, snugly encased, they drop to the ground to pupate. You can find a photo of the black-and-white adult weevil on the British Leafminers website.
09 Thursday Jun 2022
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Blennocampa phyllocolpa, British galls, British sawflies, galls caused by sawflies, galls on roses, insects on roses, leaf-rolling sawfly larvae, rolling leaves on roses, Rose galls
I was alerted to the possibility of finding these galls by a post I saw on Twitter – social media certainly is good for spreading the word about what to look for when and where.
These galls, these downward rollings of the leaf edges on rose species, are due to the larvae of the sawfly Blennocampa phyllocolpa. Presumably, they cause the leaves to roll in order to create shelters for themselves, as the leaves seem otherwise unharmed, though, when I carefully unrolled perhaps 10 leaves, I only found a larva in one of them. The adult sawfly is a tiny black creature, photos of which you can see on The Sawflies (Symphata) of Britain and Ireland website. If you have roses in your garden, you may already be aware of this sawfly’s activities on your plants.
06 Monday Jun 2022
Tags
British moths, Coleophora anatipennella, larval cases of moths, leaf-mining moths, moth larval cases, Pistol case-bearer
The UK Moth website explains the name of this rather bland-looking moth: ‘The “Pistol Case-bearers” are so named from the resemblance of their larval cases to an old flintlock pistol in shape.’ And I think you can see that likeness in my photos.
I’d not seen anything like these before so turned to some Twitter experts for help with their identification. Fortunately, Rob Edmunds, of British Leafminers website fame, was able to confirm that these are indeed the larval cases of the Pistol case-bearer moth (Coleophora anatipennella). Their feeding makes tiny holes in the leaves, which you can see in the photos above and below, and these particular ‘pistols’ contain larvae that have over-wintered in their cases, which Rob thinks are now ‘in position pupating on the upper leaf surface’. Nature never ceases to amaze me!
earthstar 
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