Saturday, 28 September 2013

Cosmopterix pulchrimella

Cosmopterix pulchrimella was first recorded in the UK in 2001, and since then has spread along the length of the south coast of England. In 2011, Dave Slade found mines on Pellitory-of-the-Wall in Tenby, this being the first Welsh record. Since then I've been looking out for it in East Glamorgan, but have found little of the plant never mind the moth. I was on Gower a couple of weeks ago and found quite a few mines on Pellitory along a shady lane in Port Eynon, the first record for VC41. Since then Barry has found mines at Oxwich, as mentioned in one of his recent posts on this blog.

I brought around 7 occupied mines home from Port Eynon and the first adult emerged yesterday - a tiny but stunning little moth, unfortunately I haven't managed to capture a really sharp photo of it.

Cosmopterix pulchrimella
Cosmopterix pulchrimella
Mines on Pellitory
It will be interesting to try and find out how far east its distribution extends. It will probably occur anywhere the foodplant is well eastablished, but Pellitory seems to be quite localised in East Glamorgan - it occurs in a few places in Cardiff but is generally quite scarce, and I've failed to find any at all at Penarth and Barry Island.

1 comment:

  1. Very nice find George - I have a mental note of other South Gower sites, where there's a good chance we might find this recently colonist.

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