It was raining pretty heavily when we left Ipswich for this meeting but the forecast was saying less chance of rain in the west, so we were hopeful of at least a morning’s leaf-mining before the rain caught up with us.
They’ve changed the old road (Turnpike Road) running alongside the Red Lodge SSSI and the parking area we were going to use for meeting up no longer existed. As we looked for alternative parkign arrangements we did manage to meet up with Graham and Anona Finch from Leicestershire at a nearby cafe.
Red Lodge SSSI is a mixture of grassland and mainly oak scrub to the north, with some ponds and willows in the middle and towards the southern end some open sandy areas with birch saplings. We managed to do quite well over a couple of hours searching with forty-seven species recorded at the time. Some of these were macro-records with Yarrow and Grey Pug larva common on the Yarrow seed-heads, a Knot Grass larva on bramble and an adult Angle Shades. A rather bedraggled Small Copper was found hanging onto the top of the Yarrow.
It’s been a poor year generally for leaf-miners and although we managed to make a reasonable list given the habitat and size of the site numbers of mines were rather thin on the ground. Even common species such as Emmetia marginea took us some while to find. We did record a few Ectoedemia heringi on oak and I wonder if this was easier to find due to the general lack of E. subbimaculella mines. These are normally abundant mid-October and it’s hard to pick out the similar E. heringi in amongst the profusion of E. subbimacuella. The few E. subbimaculella we did find were just starting on their blotches so rather late. Opening up some stems of Viper’s Bugloss we found some larvae of Tinagma ocneromostella. Other species of note recorded included Coleophora lineolea, Stigemalla catharticella and Bucculatrix frangutella.
In the damper area of the site among the willows we had a search of some Water Mint for cases of Thiotricha subocellea. We failed to find any but did find several larvae of what appear to be Pyrausta aurata (the Mint Moth).
After a visit to West Row for a pub lunch, where we picked up Ectodemia hannoverella on fallen poplar leaves, we moved on to the Stallode area to look at a site where I had found Tischeria angusticolella and Stigmella sorbi in the past. Unfortunately part of the area where I had found the species had been cleared as it was underneath power lines. After searching the whole length of the track we failed to find either of the two species. Plenty of dog rose still remains at the site so hopefully T. angusticolella has not been completely obliterated. As most of the effort was focussed on searching the dog rose we did not pick up many other species although we did find Coloephora artemisicolella cases on Mugwort.
I think a return visit to the site in a couple of years or so will be on the cards to see if we can get luckier during a better season and when the dog rose has recovered.
Surprisingly, although we had a few light spots of rain at odd times during the day the weather was quite kind to us, I had half-expected to be going home after the pub lunch.
Tony
