This miniscule but beautofully-marked moth is the horse-chestnut leaf miner. It’s fairly unusual for a tiny micromoth to have a common name, but many of the leaf miners do, because their larvae tend to feed on specific plants and are thus easy to identify. At 4mm long and barely 1mm wide though, if it was any smaller it would hardly be a moth at all. And yet my book labes it as ‘common’. How do they know? Are there teams of spotters wandering the country tripping over the things?
And here’s another guidebook anomaly. This small moth, with a wingspan of about 2 cm, has virtually no identifying features other than a creamy colour and dusty complexion, and a vague horizontal dark line halfway down. There is also, you may notice, a dark spot near the middle of each wing. This is enough to identify it as the small dusty wave moth. It is on a page with half a dozen virtually identical moths of different sizes and slightly variable shades. And yet under ‘similar species’, the book says, ‘no similar closely-related species’, but sometimes confused with a couple of moths of the pug family. Maybe there are some glaringly identifiable features that just pass me by.
And just for fun – here is a newly-emerged harlequin ladybird (of very similar markings to the one I photographed on Tue 27/08/19), fortifying itself for the life ahead by eating its own pupal case. Yummy.
Not had many good spider pictures lately, so he is a beautifully-coloured male Araneus diadematus loose on the walls of the warehouse …
Listen to Chalkhill Blue at Bandcamp.com!
If you would like to listen to the music of Chalkhill Blue for free, or purchase a download or CD, please click the link below.
Downloads can be purchased per track or whole album.
CDs include a full 8-page inlay booklet with notes on each track.
See also:
See the Chalkhill Blue CD at:
Rock Bottom Records, Whitstable
or click on the above graphic to buy online.
Write a comment