Yorkshire Status: Formerly a rare and very local resident but now far more widespread.

People who have recently taken up moth trapping and who trap in the south-eastern corner of our lovely county may find it difficult to realise how uncommon this species used to be until about 2010. The comments from 2020 below document the spread until then, and since then it has continue to do well. 2023 was another healthy year with similar numbers to 2022. We received 127 records of 169 moths from an amazing 58 sites. We keep expecting it to move northward into oak woodland in VC62, however the northern boundary has not altered. Instead it has defied expectations by moving significantly westward, with several records well over 20km west of the previous boundary. It is almost as if there is an invisible boundary in the middle of VC62 barring further northward progress.

Sutton & Beaumont, 1989: There are only three recent sites for this species and two older, previously missed, records.

2020 (CHF): Maiden's Blush has a curious history in Yorkshire. It was known in Porritt's time from many sites across the county and he described it as distributed but not very common. There were low numbers of records, usually less than one a year, until 2007, then numbers increased exponentially to a peak of 92 records in 2017. Since then there has been a plateau, and this year we received 82 records of 100 moths from 33 sites. Seven were from new 10K squares so there has been a lot of filling in. The interesting thing is there has been very little expansion of range, though there was slight spread up the coast to Scarborough this year. The most north-westerly dot is my garden [Hutton Conyers, VC65] where I first had one back in 2004 when it was rare. I've since had singles in 2014 and 2020 but there has been no further extension of range to anywhere further north or west. It is an oak-feeder so really should be found in suitable oak woodland in the rest of the county. There is lots of good habitat up into VC62 which it really should be colonising. There have been a couple of records in Northumberland, most recently in 2017, and scattered records in Lancashire, but there doesn't appear to much of a resident population in those counties, and these might be just wanderers. It will be interesting to see what happens next.

Recorded in 69 (35%) of 200 10k Squares. First Recorded in 1883. Last Recorded in 2023. Additional Stats

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