Tony, Paul and myself decided to do a bit of daytime surveying of the 2 sites mentioned above on Saturday (3rd) as the prospects for night time trapping didn’t look too promising for the holiday weekend. Part of the reason for going to Bradfield was to try and locate the larvae of Pterophorus galactodactyla on Burdock, as they hadn’t been found for a few years.This quest was successful, with 2 larvae found. They make very distinctive round holes in the Burdock leaves, pushing the fluff to the sides. There were a lot of Burdock plants but only 2 had signs of larval damage. A mixture of searching and beating trees and shrubs for larvae resulted in a list of 41sp. Good numbers of larvae were found by both methods, good too see as this bodes well for the coming season. Nice things recorded included Eriocrania chrysolepidella mines on Hazel (second Suffolk site), Micropterix tunbergella (beaten from Hawthorn, again second recent Suffolk site), Micropterix mansuetella (found on Sedge flowers, second Suffolk site), Eulia ministrana (found at rest on Hazel), Lunar hornet clearwing (larval tunnels in Sallow logs at the wood store!), Coleophora paripennella (case on Knapweed), Ypsolopha nemorella (larva beaten from Honeysuckle) and Sprawler (larva found on Oak).
Moving on to Grove Farm in the afternoon, beating for larvae was less successful as quite a lot of the Oaks and other trees had leaves only just coming out. We still managed to find 24sp and it was interesting to compare results from the morning where we were searching an ancient wood, the woods at the farm being fairly recently planted. Interesting things found included Small yellow underwing (found in a small meadow area with a lot of the food plant, Mouse-ear chickweed), Coleophora paripennella (cases on Knapweed again) and Grapholita jungiella (netted close to vetch plants).
All in all a good day’s moth hunting.
Neil