Little mines, please little things….no, that’s not an error…let me explain. As well as birds, my other pretty much life-time fascination has been with moths. Most people’s experience of moths is a brief brownish blur in their car headlights or bashing around their bonce at night when standing under a light. Boring brown things, far less pretty than butterflies is what I often hear. How wrong people are...

Moths are attracted to lights (I should add that technically they probably are not truly attracted to light, but that is another story) and the use of moth traps which run mercury vapour, actinic or LED bulbs can ‘attract’ in large numbers of moths, sometimes in their thousands.

Mercury vapour moth trap

A moth trap in operation

If you ever get a chance to go to an organised moth trapping event, your perception of moths will be change for ever. By the way. the moths are released unharmed after being identified. 

Clockwise from top left - Convolvulus Hawkmoth, Antler Moth, Mocha and Herald, all caught round Maldon in the last two weeks.

 

However, having been trapping like this for many years, my attention has been diverted to looking for the feeding signs of many smaller moths and I mean small; some of our smallest have a wingspan of only 3mm. To find these feeding signs you have to have two things - a reasonable knowledge of plants and secondly, a willingness to spend hours peering into trees, bushes, shrubs and grasses etc without attracting too much unwanted attention!

Many such moths feed between the two layers of a leaf - a minuscule thickness about the width, well, of a leaf! And they make some amazing, but often distinct patterns which, when considered in conjunction with the species of plant that they are on, allow identification of the species involved. Others will graze the surface of the leaf of specific plants and then create a fold in the leaf, or they will create a mine over a small area of the leaf or perhaps will cut out a piece of the leaf, form it into a cone-like structure and wrap it round themselves and then feed from that. 

Caloptilia fidella - first Essex breeding record - makes a fold after grazing leaf surface 

In the last few weeks around Maldon, I have found some interesting species - the best being in my garden on Hops, Caloptilia fidella which is the first Essex breeding record (after the first Essex record of the species elsewhere in May this year).

 Others noted in the last few weeks include Stigmella tityrella on Beech and Bucculatrix thoracella on Lime at Beeleigh -

Bucculatrix thoracella - one of the smaller leaf mines

Stigmella tityrella - a small dark wiggly mine

 

Phyllonorycter rajella on Alder in Oak-tree Meadow, 

Phyllonorycter rajella - upper surface of mine (caterpillar is on underside)

Antispila petryi on Dogwood

Antispila petryi - note the caterpillar within the thickness of the leaf

 

and Etainia louisella on Field Maple in Hazeleigh Woods 

Etainia louisella - short mine in the seed of Field Maple

whilst going further back my favourite ‘case-bearer’ or Coleophora is the bizarrely shaped Coleophora kuehnella 

Coleophora kuenella - barely 5mm tall 

What do the adult moths look like, I hear you ask...well, that will have to be for another time.

This is just a tiny sample of the tiny moths out there, right under our noses but they are not the only families to mine leaves, large numbers of flies and beetles do too, adding an extra level of challenge to any identification. Indeed, two new species of fly never before found in Essex have been identified in Hazeleigh Wood over the last two years, both feeding on Wood Anemone.

Top Phytomyza hendeli, bottom Phytomyza anemones, both new to Essex

As you can guess, I have become enthralled by these tiny creatures and their fascinating lifestyles. Take a look next time you are out and about - see if you can see any, take a picture, go on, get hooked!