Buckthorn Pigmy

A miner of buckthorns, both Common Buckthorn <i>Rhamnus cathartica</i> and Alder Buckthorn <i>Frangula alnus</i>.&nbsp; Both foodplants are local and often scarce in Somerset.&nbsp; Mines can often be easy to find and frequent on an individual shrub, and the map may well give a more accurate picture of this species' distribution than is usually the case for leaf-miners.

Scarce Maple Pigmy

A leaf-miner on Field maple and Norway maple.&nbsp; Essentially a south-eastern species, it has been expanding its range in recent years, presumably in response to the warming climate.&nbsp; This range expansion has been slow to reach Somerset, and has only done so in the last few years, with only isolated records at this point.&nbsp; This is in contrast to Gloucestershire immediately to the north where the moth is well-established across much of the county and the mines are easy to locate.&nbsp; No doubt it will become much commoner in the near future.

Apple Pigmy

Mining the leaves of apple, this moth is either rare or under-recorded even by the standards of leaf-miners, with just 15 records in the database and (unlike most leaf-miners) very few in the last decade.

Stigmella malella

Apple Pigmy