Yorkshire Status: Fairly common and thinly distributed resident.

It is interesting to read in Sutton and Beaumont (below) how rare this species was in the county until recently. It only seemed to become properly resident from 1981 onwards. This coincided with range expansion to our south with colonisation of a lot of new ground in the Midlands. It has continued moving north and reached Scotland in 1997. In Yorkshire, numbers built up rapidly until 2010. After this things stabilised and there has possibly been a slight fall since then. This is a common situation with a moth that expands rapidly. Numbers can quickly build up but eventually its parasitoids catch up with it and an equilibrium is reached. This is a moth of woodland and scrub, and often comes into gardens. The larvae are fondest of blackthorn and hawthorn. In the early part of the colonisation some big counts were recorded, for example 48 at Ripon Parks on 29/5/2009.

Sutton & Beaumont, 1989: There were two records of this species in Porritt's list (1883-86) but he had never seen it in the County. There are three recent records, however the first two were only seen by their captors and records of this importance cannot be accepted as definite on this basis, although it is difficult to see how such a distinctive species could be recorded in error. There was a proven County record in 1988 and several specimens appeared in Derbyshire in 1985 and 1986 (Harrison & Sterling, 1986). There was also a record from Clumber Park in Nottinghamshire (per SLS) in 1988 so it would seem the species is expanding northwards and our first two were some of the pioneers. There is also an old record from Scarborough in May 1938 (Walsh, 1956) which was not previously mentioned.

Recorded in 103 (52%) of 200 10k Squares.
First Recorded in 1883.
Last Recorded in 2023.
Additional Stats