Cliff Henry found a number of case-bearing moth larvae (bagworms) on the walls of the National Trust, Giant’s Causeway offices 25th October 2018. Cases of these Psychids are not always easy to speciate and after Cliff brought them to me I circulated images to Ben Smart and J.R. Langmaid. Based on the larva they initially thought they were likely to be 11.002 175 Narycia duplicella. This was proved incorrect when I bred through a female in early 2019 which was wingless (Narycia has fully winged adults) and led me to believe it was in fact a Dahlica species. Images were circulated and a specimen sent to Ken Bond for dissection. Unfortunately the various structures examined did not lead to a definitive answer as the results were ambiguous.
As a last resort a freshly collected specimen was sent to the editor of Atropos journal who arranged DNA analysis to finally get a definitive identification. This finally confirmed the specimens as Dahlica lichenella. This was the original putative identification by Cliff! This species is new to Ireland.
11.005 79 Lichen Case-bearer Dahlica lichenella. Photo by Roy Anderson
15.065 BF343 Phyllonorycter esperella. (Goeze, 1783). New to Ireland
Two things conspired, firstly I had to attend the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast on 9th October 2019 for a check-up. Secondly I had an increased interest in hornbeam after Eamonn O’Donnell had found what appeared to be the tentiform mines of Phyllonorycter tenerella in Dublin. It turned out that the avenue between the main car park and the main building at the Royal is lined with hornbeams. It did not take long to notice the gallery mines of Stigmella microtheriella and S. floslactella and then I saw the first distinctive upper surface tent mine of P. esperella.. and then another… none of the other similar mines (such as P. coryli on hazel) are found on hornbeam. I collected a couple of specimens and went for my appointment… slightly late. After the appointment I called into Musgrave Park (next to another hospital!) in the knowledge that there is a well-established hornbeam hedge around the small car park. On parking up I could actually see esperella mines from the car window…
The hornbeams around these two Belfast hospitals are obviously imported as established trees, the moths have arrived with them. Long established hornbeams in Botanic are so far devoid of esperella but it is likely that they will move out over the next few years. As for tenerella I have had no luck. Occupied mines which look like this species have turned out to be the polyphagous (and rather annoying) P. messaniella but I will keep looking.
On 24 May 2017 I caught an unfamiliar species in a light trap at Tramore, Co. Waterford (grid reference S577013). I tentatively identified it using British Pyralid Moths and Moths of Europe Vol.4. as Ephestia woodiella. The moth was subsequently dissected and confirmed by Ken Bond as a male of the species and new to Ireland. The specimen will be lodged with the National Museum of Ireland, Natural History, Dublin.
In Britain it is reported to fly from May to September. Unlike other British members of the genus, it is not a pest of warehouses and is encountered outdoors, having been beaten from ivy, yew and alder and it also comes to light. The larva is suspected to feed on dried plant material, dried berries and the dead stems of ivy. Recorded from England, Wales and the Channel Islands, it is widely distributed across much of central Western Europe.
Tony Bryant and Ken Bond.
Bryant, T. & Bond K.G.M., 2017. Ephestia woodiella Richards & Thomson, 1932 (Lep.: Pyralidae) new to Ireland. The Entomologist’s Record and Journal of Variation 129: 230.
This just proves that you do not have to always travel far to find things of interest, sometimes they are just on your doorstep…. It is worth noting that the four leaf-mining species addressed here are all found on non-native host species although lime (Tilia spp.) are long established. Increased movement of plant species around Europe and from further afield will continue to inadvertently introduce species to new areas where they may become permanently established.
The first three records have been published in the annual Microlepidoptera report in The Entomologist’s Record and Journal of Variation as well as being included in an update paper on Irish Microlepidoptera by Ken Bond in the same journal . The latter two records are yet to be published.
14.009 Bucculatrix thoracella
18th August 2013: This is the one that really started me looking at leaf mines. After checking my actinic trap in the garden I was walking back along the garden path. As usual it was an appalling catch but then the sunlight illuminated what appeared to be a small leaf mine on a lime (Tilia sp.) leaf. Closer examination revealed a number of tiny gallery mines and small patches of feeding damage. A check on the usual websites strongly suggested they were mines of B. thoracella. I then checked the Moths Ireland on-line maps to find there were no records of this species. I emailed the scanned images to Dave Grundy, Ben Smart and John Langmaid who all confirmed my identification. In Britain the species appears to have more southerly distribution reaching as far north as Cumbria. In Ireland the species has subsequently been found in Dublin and Cork and must have been over-looked.
15.066 Phyllonorycter strigulatella
9th November 2016: This was a species I had been looking for without success but whilst walking down the Lisburn road in Belfast, heading for the bank, I noticed three or four grey alders in Drumglass Park. I immediately found a number of the typically long, tightly rolled tent mines positioned between leaf veins. There were multiple small creases on the “tent”. The occupied mines contained bright yellowish larvae with a distinctive pattern on dorsal surface of the head. This species doesn’t feed on other alder species in Britain. Identification was quickly confirmed by John Langmaid. It is known from various isolated sites from north-west England and south-east Scotland, south through Wales to East Anglia and southern England.
11.007 Bankesia conspurcatella
10th March 2018: Myself and my wife, Avril, were over my step-daughter’s house on the Belmont Road, Belfast. As we were leaving Avril noticed a small moth on the hallway wall. I duly caught it and brought it home. I don’t spend much time looking at adult micros but I expected this to be a cork moth Nemapogon cloacella. This quickly proved incorrect. I took images and posted on a closed site where after some head scratching Ben Smart suggested it was Bankesia. This proved correct, it was a totally unexpected discovery as this species is very uncommon with a very patchy distribution in Britain having only been rediscovered in Kent in 1984 after years of having “gone missing”. It is one of the Psychids or “bagworms”. The larvae of these species live in cases constructed of detritus, algae or lichens, the adults of some species are wingless and some are parthenogenetic. I decided that the larvae would not be far away and on 2nd April I discovered a colony of c. 45 cases on my step-daughter’s garden fence! This remains the only known site in Ireland! The adult specimen was set by Ken Bond and now resides in the National Museum in Dublin.
15.050 Phyllonorycter cerasicolella
9th October 2018: Two days previous Andy Banthorpe had posted images of the mines of this species from North Wales. This prompted me to think as to where I might find the host plant, Prunus cerasus, in Northern Ireland. The answer came quickly enough… B & Q at the Belfast Harbour Exchange. Three shrubs and two tent mines! The mines lie typically between leaf veins, long and contracting the leaf into a tube. These were confirmed by Andy and John Langmaid. In Britain it is largely restricted to the area south of a line from the Mersey to the Humber.
15.051 Phyllonorycter lantanella
17th April 2019: I had been searching unsuccessfully for this species for a while after posts by Patrick Clement and others on the excellent Micro-moth Field Tips Facebook site. It is found on various species of Viburnum, various species of which are frequently used for structural planting in parks, gardens and around shopping complexes! My luck changed whilst walking down the Lisburn Road when Andy Crory rang me on the mobile. Because of the traffic noise I diverted into Drumglass Park. Whilst continuing my conversation I wandered towards a patch of Viburnum tinus where to my surprise was a Phyllonorycter mine of what I presumed would be P. lantanella. Once home I examined and photographed the mines and quickly received confirmation. The following day I rechecked the garden Viburnum and found more mines which I had obviously overlooked. Attempts at breeding through proved fruitless but did produce a number of tiny parasitic wasps. In Britain it is largely confined to South Wales and Central and Southern England. .
Lempke’s Gold Spot – First confirmed Irish records
Hazel Watson
I have been lucky enough to live on Rathlin Island for nearly three years now and, with my husband Ric Else. We have been recording moths whenever the weather allows. In this time we have managed to record 337 species, and 143 of these were new for the island’s all-time moth list, which now stands at 376 species.
Before we arrived, moth recording on Rathlin had only been very sporadic and many of those moths we’ve recorded here for the first time are relatively common and widespread species that have presumably been here all along. While it is always rewarding to add new species to the list, we had yet to discover anything of real national significance. But the morning of 23rd July 2019 was to bring us a real find, and it was one we could so easily have missed!
That morning I had struggled to drag myself out of bed and was lagging behind the others. Still half asleep and with a mug of much-needed coffee in hand, I stumbled over to the mothing station where Ric was already getting on with the business of looking through the moth trap, assisted by a few of the keen RSPB volunteers from the cottage next door. Overnight the trap had been out in a nearby garden, where the McFauls very kindly provide excellent habitat for moths and moth-ers alike.
My eyes had barely begun to focus properly when I glanced down at a moth on an eggbox that had already been examined. In my drowsy state I could have been still dreaming, but something about the Gold Spot caught my eye. Could it possibly be….? “Isn’t that a Lempke’s Gold Spot?” I said to Ric, who surely thought I was delirious, but humoured me by having another look. We all peered closely at the moth in question. The two Gold Spot species are almost identical, but the apical streak of this one was undeniably blunt-ended – a feature of Lempke’s Gold Spot. “Surely THAT IS A LEMPKE’S!” I proclaimed triumphantly, suddenly wide awake as the penny was starting to drop that this was potentially a very exciting find. Ric had to admit it did look promising. We potted the individual for closer scrutiny later, as there were still plenty of other moths to look at in the trap. Each egg box was examined in turn, revealing a total catch of 98 individual moths of 37 species, and despite a few other goodies including our first Cloaked Minor, nobody cared much because Gold Spots were all we were interested in by this stage. In our catch we had turned up another two Gold Spots – one with typical markings and, quite unbelievably, a second that also looked a good candidate for Lempke’s. How thrilling, if this is what they really were!
Lempke’s Gold Spot (Rathlin 2019)
By this time we were running late for work, so it wasn’t until later that we could have a closer look at the two possible Lempke’s Gold Spots. Having spent the day chilling out in the fridge, both cooperated obligingly for forewing measurements, and with both at 15mm they fitted exactly within the published range for Lempke’s and at the smallest end of the range for Gold Spot (all the Gold Spots we have measured have been 16–18mm). After poring over many online images of wing markings, we felt confident that our two were consistent with Lempke’s and others who viewed our photos agreed. However, for positive identification, and as a potential national first, the specimens would have to be kept and sent away for confirmation under the microscope. As moth lovers, it is bittersweet to make an exciting find like this and have to preserve them as specimens, but it is necessary for the scientific record. We laid these two beautiful creatures to rest in the freezer, and we were delighted when Dr Ken Bond requested the specimens to be sent over from Rathlin.
Mothing at Kinramer Cottage, Rathlin, Co.Antrim
We were even more delighted a few weeks later when Ken performed the dissection and confirmed that both specimens were certainly Lempke’s Gold Spots, one male and one female. He also confirmed that these would be considered the first and second verified records of the species anywhere in Ireland.
We are thrilled to have found an Irish first on Rathlin, but we’re sure there are plenty more discoveries to be made on this exciting island.
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