The Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Man - Genesis

  We have to gravitate back to last Friday for the highlight of a day so complex, miles outside of my particular comfort zone, that it has taken all of this time to piece it together, hopefully accurately. Among the exponents it is well known that “we don’t do Micro Moths”, the generally smaller Insects of the group, as hardly able to see them let alone identify and in any case you also have to have some command of Latin with me not being able to speak English plopery! A text early in the day alerted me to a proposed visit to the heath of Dr Phil Sterling, one of the Senior Ayatollahs of the subject, on a mission to find out more about a seriously rare species and maybe best from here on that we use his own (edited) words.

 Having, individually, already found many dozens of mining’s of the

 MINATOUR BEETLE  

This rendezvous was off to a good start, but next we had to find our host.

 

Not at all unexpectedly this is where and how he was found when we met, up to the chest in vegetation and ankle deep in flood water, and looking for the larvae of

 Monochroa lutulentella 

(you were warned) which is believed to live in the roots of Meadowsweet, based on information from back in the Victorian era, but no-one has seen the larva since. It was never going to be an easy task and no surprise when it wasn’t found on this first attempt. Many others must have trodden this same path since the late 1800’s but evidence of feeding in the roots we examined, by a Fly type, and one that might have been lepidopteran that were spread in the root chamber unlike the fly (photo attached) and this root had an old dead stem with a hole near the base (Bagsy, you took a shot of this). I’ll be back next spring to have another search.

which might have been a Pupa exit hole.

Other plants in the Wet Meadow included

HIMALAYAN BALSAM

WATERMINT

Footnote:- The Monochroa is a rare species in Britain, with just one previous record in the area VC11 (Hants/Dorset) in 2002, but this summer, along with Dave Foot and Bagsy we found several in the traps on the Heath indicating they are resident nearby with the meadows, photographed above, seemingly an ideal location for them.

The tiny Moth you cleverly caught in your hand is

Calybites phasianipennella

Life-size images to show just what sizes we are dealing with here! 

with its larva living on Docks and

Common Sorrels.

To end this expedition on yet another high note it was thought that Phil may not have seen one of the Insect which we have found plentiful this year

MERVIELLE du JOUR

which appeared to fill (no pun intended) him with delight!
Enough is usually enough, but while inspecting this there came the calls of a

CROSSBILL

which, like a cherry on a cake, landed directly above us! His parting words were,

"I’ll be back next spring to have another search" but it is rather hoped that he and Dave might find time for just one more Moth Trapping Session before the season comes to a close!

Share his peace. sign the lease he's a 'Supersonic Scientist' he's the 

Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Man

BEST WISHES GENTS!