Friday 4 April 2014

Rise of the micros

We had a good trapping session this week, with 17 species in one night (and that’s just the moths!). Numbers are certainly starting to improve and the quakers and pugs are out in force. The micros are starting to gather in number as well, which makes for some extra pondering over their ID and adds to the challenge (and fun) of it all! We’ve added a couple of new species to our site list this year – Caloptilia semifascia and Dotted Chestnut, which appears to be expanding its range in this area. Some of the species from the trap this week were:
Dotted Chestnut
Eriocrania subpurpurella
Phtheochroa rugosana 
Eriocrania unimaculella
Oak Beauty

We’re on a total of 36 species now (31 moths + 5 butterflies).

4 comments:

  1. Eriocaniidae can be hard to ID as adults (apart from subpurpurella). I'm not sure about the E. unimaculella, doesn't quite look right and think I would have hazarded a guess at E. sangii pending closer inspection.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It was between E. unimaculella and E. sangii, but we went with E. unimaculella because of the tornal spot being silver (although there seems to be some debate over this character). We'll check for leaf mines next month to see if we can confirm it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Would be good to know, and whilst both species mine on birch the larvae are quite different (though doesn't help that nearly all the Eriocraniidae feed on birch!). This is a good website in-case you haven't seen it: http://www.leafmines.co.uk/index.htm

    ReplyDelete