Another First for Skye!

Flushed with yesterday's successful hunt amongst birches for the mines of Heliozela hammoniella, today I shot off in search of oak and it's associated Heliozela, namely H.sericiella. There's hardly any oak up this end of Skye, so I headed south and figured I could kill two birds with one stone by dropping into the woodland at Kilmarie where I needed to check some flymines on Goldenrod. 

Parking up, I headed down a grassy ride between the trees noting a rather lamentable absence of oaks. Dammit, now what? Well I had the next generation of agromyzid larvae on Goldenrod to collect. Plenty of mines, unfortunately either vacant or aborted. I found one with a larva within, but the mine is all wrong for the species I was hoping to find. I took some leaves back anyway, I've pressed them and can add them to my collection. 

Vacant flymine on Goldenrod, causer as yet unknown

I also found this monstrous thing!

Growing beneath Downy Birch, some kind of a giant bolete, I guess?

I haven't even attempted to ID it yet, probably something easy. Birch Knight looks about right, but seems to be something of a species agg.

Still no oaks, but I did spy quite a few Alders. Hmmm, Alder has it's very own Heliozela which, according to Butterfly Conservation and the County Moth Recorder, has never been recorded on Skye. However, the NBN has a single Skye record from Carl Farmer, he's pretty good so I'm not sure how the record never made it beyond NBN. 

No kidding, within two minutes of checking the first Alder, I'd found a mine with cut-out! I couldn't believe my luck

Mine of Heliozela resplendella in all of it's glory!!!

Essentially, this is pretty much identical to yesterday's Heliozela hammoniella mine, except that it starts halfway up the midrib instead of emerging at the petiole. And it's on Alder not a birch. I had fretted that it would be quite difficult to spot on a dark leaf, but actually it stood out like a sore thumb. It definitely helped that the Alders here aren't already full of nibbled holes (as they are back in Uig). Here's a piccie of the tree in question

The nearest tree is the Alder that had the mine on it - note it's a fully sunlit tree

Buoyed by success, I checked several other Alders along the ride and soon had a fine collection of mined leaves

Every one of these was a terminal leaf situated on lower branches in full sunlight. I had a good hard look higher into the trees and also examined leaves away from the tips without any success. I then started checking Alders that were in the woodland and in shade, again no luck. 

The obvious conclusion that I draw from this is that, on Skye at least, Heliozela resplendella requires leaves that are fully sunlit and that leaves growing in, or subjected to, shade are apparently unsuitable. But that's just my immediate thought, which could be miles out. 

I returned to Uig to put this theory to the test. There's absolutely shedloads of Alder growing throughout Uig Wood. I'd already spent an hour or so yesterday, checking shaded trees without any success. Today I deliberately decided to restrict my search to just two Alders growing on the very edge of Uig Wood and directly facing the sun. Guess what...

Heliozela resplendella, I'll be buggered! 

And here's a pic of the tree in question. The mine was about four feet above the ground and situated in a terminal leaf (or what's left of it)

Found on the low branches just above the Butterbur leaves

So the theory holds water so far! I whacked some pics up on the Skye Moths FB page. Keith (CMR) came back with Mark Young comments "unmistakable". Mark Young is micro-lep recorder for Scotland, Keith always runs potential 'new for Skye' species past him before adding it to the records, better safe than sorry. Good stuff, after yesterday's hoo-haa I actually do have a Heliozela new for Skye. Unless Carl Farmer's record is subsequently accepted, in which case that just leaves me Heliozela sericiella on oak. 

Staying with the hole theme for a while longer...

I'm determined not to play anything by the band Hole, can't say I like the woman one bit, so have some more from Royal Blood. This track is absolutely kickin' and I love it! Turn the volume up high, lay back, close your eyes and immerse yourself in some great big chugging riffs