Great stuff Chris, how are they doing this year?

Thanks Martin - loving it here! I'm sure I'm overlooking lots of nice Saproxylic Diptera that you'd be much better at ID-ing, trying to learn... let me know if you are passing :)

A couple of random wildlife highlights so far: Grapholita caecana - a surprise capture on an acid grassland, seems to be new to Essex, and a lovely Grass Snake on one of my reptile surveys.

Yes often the case I think! I think also the berries do take two years to ripen, so you naturally get a mixture of ages on the same bush as well.

No worries Dave, good luck! I think every chance it could be lurking on Juniper in Surrey/Hants and just needs a good search. I'd been recording around the Junipers for several years at Aston Rowant before I found it with @jamesehammond.bsky.social's prompt and had probably just overlooked it.

It has been found over quite a large area of southern England, mostly to a range of pheromone lures in urban gardens, but also on wild Junipers on the Chilterns and Berks downs, where we found it. It is tiny and easy to overlook, so keep an eye out!

And then later in the summer, the distinctive discolouration of Juniper berries, which become papery and pale blue (with orange frass exuded from the base) when a larva is within. Check the larva though - other stuff feeds in Juniper berries (Blastobasis, Argyresthia)!

Look out for the (tiny!) adults which can be found flying low over the foodplant on warm afternoons from the end of May.

I'm always quite cautious with adult Elachistids but would have been happy to ID this on external features (I think you could even say it's probably a male given how dark it is)? They do wear and get tricky quickly though don't they :)