Twenty-plume moth and honeysuckle

 

Fragrant honeysuckle Lonicera periclymenum that grows in our garden hedge provides nectar for moths in summer ……

…. berries for birds in autumn …

…. and a breeding site for this exquisite little twenty-plume moth Alucita hexadactyla, which has wings composed of tiny plumes that resemble feathers. It lays its eggs in honeysuckle leaves and flower buds. Plume moths fly at dusk and are strongly attracted to lit windows; I found this one, with a wingspan of about a centimeter, settled on our living room wall.

The common name is a misnomer because each of the four wings has six plumes, so it should really be the twenty-four-plume moth, but the scientific name is accurate: hexadactyla means six fingers.

Bramble leaf miner

Almost a work of abstract art - last year's leaf mines of the bramble leaf miner moth Stigmella aurella in an old bramble leaf. It looks like there were two miners in this one,  with their feeding tunnels becoming increasingly broad as the larvae grew.

 

A micro-moth with a liking for germander speedwell

The grassland areas of Low Burnhall Woodland Trust reserve have some very fine patches of germander speedwell in bloom at the moment, and they seem to be very popular with micro-moths.

As far as I can tell this tiny insect is the cock'sfoot moth Glyphipteryx simpliciella, which breeds on cock'sfoot grass but clearly finds these speedwell flowers very attractive.

Snowdrop Micromoth

I found this tiny micromoth yesterday when it was siphoning nectar from snowdrop flowers. Thanks to Stewart at From the Notebook for identifying this moth for me as Ysolopha ustella.

It seemed to be very proficient at slipping its long proboscis in between the petals to reach the nectar, so it might be a snowdrop specialist.

 In the second picture you can see that it has a scattering of golden scales when the sunlight strikes its wings.

Nettle-tap micro-moth

No Nettles Required: The Reassuring Truth about Wildlife Gardening, by Dr. Ken Thompson, is one of the best books about wildlife gardening that I have encountered, largely because it's based on his several years of research into wildlife in gardens in Sheffield. Many wildlife gardening books simply trot out the same old formulaic advice that's recycled from earlier books, or are based on wishful thinking rather than real experience. Thompson's book is full of sound advice about how to integrate elements of wildlife gardening into a plot that produces food and is aesthetically pleasing; it has probably converted a lot of people to a more wildlife-friendly form of gardening who might otherwise have been put off by the thought of accommodating nettles.

One of the points he makes in his book is that cultivating nettles in the hope that nettle-breeding butterflies like peacocks, small tortoiseshells and commas will colonise them isn't a core activity for the wildlife gardener - there's no shortage of nettles in the wider countryside and on waste ground everywhere and these butterflies most often choose large swathes of nettles to lay their eggs on, rather than small patches in corners of typical gardens. There are better ways to use gardens to encourage wildlife to take up residence - like making sure there's a pond, a log pile, some long grass and plenty of pollen- and nectar-producing flowers (which don't necessarily need to be natives).

Of course nettles have an extensive insect fauna (explored in B.N.K Davis's book Insects on Nettles), in addition to the butterflies mentioned above, but some of the common nettle specialists visit nettle-free gardens to feed even it there are no host plants to lay their eggs on. We've had large numbers of this day-flying micro-moth, the nettle-tap Anthophila fabriciana , in our garden this year even though it's a nettle-free zone. They come for the easily-accessible nectar in plants like this cow parsley - you can see the moth's proboscis sucking up nectar in the top picture.The moth's generic name - Anthophila - means 'flower lover'.

Mystery Micro-moth.... named

Can anyone ID this micro-moth that I found in the garden yesterday evening? I can't see anything in Sterling and Parson's Field Guide to Micro-moths that's a really convincing match......

Any help gratefully received .....

Postscript: Thanks to generous help from a user of iSpot it has been named as the Beech midget Phyllonorycter mastingella, whose larvae mine beech leaves - which makes perfect sense, as I found it near my beech hedge

A Mystery (almost) Solved

I took this photograph several years ago in our back garden but have never been able to identify the insect that spins this delicate net-like cocoon around its pupa. Then a couple of weeks ago the new Field Guide to Micro-moths of Great Britain and Ireland, by Phil Sterling and Mark Parsons  (British Wildlife Publishing) appeared and that contains a picture of a very similar cocoon spun by the pupating larva of a common moth that goes by the jaw-breaking name of Schreckensteinia festaliella. 


I guess there might be other micro-moths that spin a similar cocoon, but at least now I think I'm a little closer to knowing what this is. Next time I find one I'll hatch out the moth and confirm its ID, or not - as the case may be....