Cosmet Quest

The “Cosmets” – or to describe them more correctly, the Cosmopterigidae – are a small group of mostly black, red and silver marked micro moths. The other thing they have in common is that I’ve not seen many of them. However, last year I came of across what appeared to be the feeding signs of Cosmopterix zieglerella (the Hedge Cosmet) on some river bank Hop along the Gipping in Needham Market. Determined to prove that I was correct, and armed with a valuable bit of advice from Neil, I went out at lunchtime today to do a bit of ‘tapping’. Pretty much the first plant I tried resulted in an adult zieglerella jump into the spring net … and subsequently the pot. Further searches failed to turn up any more but I’m chuffed to bits with this one bit of luck. As for getting a photo, I rate my chances as < 0.5 out of 10!