Food Plant: a wide variety of grasses

Egg: near the tip of the leaf

Mine: autumn - May

Notes: It makes a small narrow mine in the autumn and overwinters. In the spring it changes leaves and mines tip downwards. The mine fills the leaf width. The frass is packed in the top of the mine. A young mine on Festuca sp.. growing on a slumped limstone cliff in mid-winter in the field. The whitish discolouration of the leaf caused by the larva mining is just visible here. Adults reared.

Data: 29.xii.2022, Watchet, Somerset, VC5

Image:© Will Langdon