I have been half-heartedly searching for mines of Stigmella myrtilella on Bilberry for years, but never found any. Then someone posted a photo of one Twitter with a comment along the lines of "I searched 1000 plants today and finally found a mine". During a day's fieldwork NVC mapping the edge of Waun Afon today, I scanned across loads of patches of Bilberry without seeing any mines. Eventually I thought some additional shelter from Molinia plants might provide suitable conditions, so I checked the first such patch and found a mine immediately. Despite a lot more checking I failed to see another - these are clearly exceedingly elusive moths! There is one previous county record: from Cleddon Bog in 1973.
That`s really interesting Sam, as I went looking for this very species this week at a bilberry-rich oak `cwm`, but failed to find any.
ReplyDeleteI often wonder how much effort people put in to search for mines of `species x` and whether I`m too cursory at times. In an odd way, it`s good to know that this particular species is a blighter to find!
Great find. It's not recorded from Glamorgan but must be out there somewhere...
ReplyDeleteAndrew Graham notes on his North Wales website that it often requires a bit of searching to find, and is more likely in woodland than open moorland.