Micros galore at Dingestow

After 2 days away in NE Wales I returned to Dingestow to catch the tail end of the Diamond-backed Moth influx - 50+ around the garden today.  Luckily Kevin Hewitt got in on the main action, with over 100 in his MV in Blackwood a couple of nights ago.  However, it was other Micros, in particular Tortricids, that will make the weekend memorable. 

Things started well with two unfamiliar but very distinctive Tortricids in the orchard polytunnel (which acts like a malaise trap, holding day-flying Micros and other inverts which I can then pot up in the evening).  One was the utterly stunning Pammene ochesnheimeriana - new for Monmouthshire (and the 2nd for Wales, following one in Rads in 2012; thanks to Adam Rowe for his LERC check) - and the other baffled me because its white dorsal X matched no European species... luckily, before embarrassing myself with an on-line question, I zoomed into the photo and saw the X to be a combination of the pale yellow scales of Dichrorampha petiverella and some bizarrely symmetrical wear.

 

My next raid on the polytunnel produced the bright orange gelechid Chrysoesthia drurella (3 previous Dingestow records and no others in VC35), as well as a plain Dichrorampha that I should have kept for dissection but which escaped during its photo shoot.  This made a nice comparison with a Cydia nigricana swept from vetches in the garden an hour earlier.

An excellent day was rounded off nicely with two day-flying Tineids, both new for Dingestow: a Psychoides verhuella at 14:00 and a Triaxomera parasitella at 18:00.  The former lacks the pale tornal spot of the commoner P. filicivora but has similarly short antennae, whilst the latter looks like a large, well-marked Nemapogon until the shapes of the dark wing markings are studied (e.g. no anvil-shaped mark on the costa).