Small Tortoiseshells along the Suffolk Coast

determined by dissection, as E. hannoverella and E. turbidella are indistinguishable in the majority of cases as adults from external appearance alone.

This group of moths has a reputation for being tricky to rear through to the adult stage as the larvae leave the mine and spend the winter as a pupa in a small cocoon with the adults emerging in the spring. Being so small they are prone to drying out and appear to need exposure to cold weather before they will emerge and some species can be very heavily parasitised. Jon Clifton, Neil Sherman and myself took mines from two sites in Suffolk and tried different techniques to over-winter them in the hope that at least one of us would manage to rear some adults. This actually proved more successful than expected and in April and May the majority of adults hatched from both sites. These were determined by Jon Clifton to be E. hannoverella - a new species of moth to Britain found in Suffolk. Returning to events in late 2003, I had continued to search for further sites with mines in black poplar hybrids and managed to locate two further sites in Suffolk, one in the Woodbridge area and the other near Brandon. Andy Musgrove also managed to find some mines in Norfolk. at Thetford. It would appear that E. hannoverella is established in at least two broad areas of Suffolk and I suspect will be found in other areas of the county as well. How widespread it will be outside the county is hard to say. Leaf-miner recording certainly has a long history in Essex and some of the other adjoining/nearby counties to Suffolk have or have had recorders interested in recording leaf-mining moths. Black poplar and its hybrids have other leaf-mining moth species associated with them that are likely to have attracted the attention of leaf-miner recorders in the past, so it would seem unlikely that they would have been over-looked for a long period of time. Now that the species has been recognised as occurring in this country it will hopefully encourage other recorders to go out and look for it so that its precise distribution can be determined.

by Richard Stewart

On Mai,ch 29th 2004 I walked from Buss Creek

at Southwold right through to the railway station at Lowestoft. It was a lovely day for this time of year but cloudy conditions restricted my butterfly sightings to just a few unidentified and distant fliers.

That was until the afrernoon, when the sun came out and the increased temperature produced a very surprising total of 43 Small Tortoiseshells between Kessingland Beach and the vegetation alongside the tracks at Lowestofr railway station. This is easily my best one-day total for this species at such an early date, in fact I doubt if I have ever seen that number previously in the whole of March. It was also interesring to note that just two other butterflies were recorded, both Peacocks. Several of the 43 were close together, showing courtship behaviour, and condition varied from excellent to ragged. Many were close to Alexanders, but this might have simply been because this plant has invaded most suitable habitats close to the path near the beach. What I could not decide was whether these represented a local population, which had successfully hibernated and was evident along the path because of the sunshine, or whether they were migrants. There was a large movement of moths and butterflies into some south and southwest counties in February 2004. Dorset was the chief beneficiary, with over 300 records of the Painted Lady received by 28th March plus sightings of several rare migratory moths. Was this day's total the easterly tail end of this movement? If anyone else has similar numbers from other sites at the end of March, perhaps they could report them to Rob Parker.