Back in September, in my blog Leafmines: Bedellia somnulentella, I covered the mines of a moth whose larvae have some unusual habits, spinning hammocks outside their mines to rest and pupate in. Now that I’m aware of them, I’ve been seeing these mines almost everywhere I see Field bindweed. And, during last Tuesday’s walk, when I saw the plant and turned over a few leaves, I spotted two leaves that had a total of three pupae suspended beneath. I decided to bring them home so that I could, hopefully, see what the adult moth looked like.

In the intervening six days, another larva has pupated – I hadn’t even realised there was another larva in the leaves but, on Thursday, as the leaves began to dry and shrivel, it appeared, climbed up the side of the jar, spun a hammock under the lid, and pupated.

Then, yesterday, when the wild, wet, windy weather meant I spent a day at home – a rarity for me, two of the adult moths hatched from their pupae. I couldn’t get any decent images through the glass so decided to risk opening the jar to grab a few quick photos.

And today I released them into the wild. All going well, there should be two more moths to come.