Moth Mondays - The Red-necked Footman

MOTH MONDAYS

The Red-necked Footman

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Arthropoda

Class: Insecta

Order: Lepidoptera

Superfamily: Noctuoidea

Family: Arctiidae
Subfamily: Lithosiinae
Genus: Atolmis
Species: Atolmis rubricollis

A chorister for Boxing Day... albeit dressed in black with a red ruff...
all these pictures are of the same small moth... we've only seen it the once!!
[Early July 2014]
It is a woodland species and may well have arrived by accident?

This little moth, another footman, is the Red-necked Footman [Atolmis rubricollis] la Veuve, and is normally found in the forested regions of Europe and Northern Asia during the summer.

As mentioned, this is a black thorax with a collar of red, as on most pictures...
but you can clearly see red near the BACK of the thorax...
this is visible on other pictures on other sites.

We do have large woods very close to us, though, and the amount of woodland on our patch is increasing year on year.

Not the best photograph, but it also shows the red near the back of the thorax.

The caterpillars are found on Oak and Beech trees.. and feed on lichens...
here, they are equally likely to be found on Hornbeam... or probably any other broadleaf tree with tasty lichens!

From Wiki... [with reservations in red]:
The red-necked footman is a small moth that is mostly charcoal grey or deep dark brown (fresh specimens almost black), but has a conspicuous orange thorax, part of which is visible behind the black head as an orange-red collar. [I haven't found ONE picture that shows this... they all show a black thorax with a red or orange collar] The hindwings are a brownish-grey colour. The antennae and legs are black and the end of the abdomen is yellowish-orange or golden yellow. The wings are tightly folded together around the body and have pleated, squared-off ends.[again I haven't found ONE picture that shows this] The wingspan is 25 to 35 mm (1.0 to 1.4 in) and the length of the forewings is 15 to 18 mm (0.6 to 0.7 in).

The white eggs of the red-necked footman are laid in small groups in crevices in the branches of trees, especially those of old firs.[not according to all the other references]. They grow to a length of about 27 mm (1.1 in). Their head is black with a bold diagonal white stripe on either side. Their main colour is dark greenish-grey marbled with cream. Each segment bears six tiny reddish yellow warts which bear black hairs. [in fact, they are so lichen-like, that in one photograph on lepidoptera.eu... the caterpillar mid picture is almost invisible!] The caterpillars feed on lichens growing on the trunks and branches of trees, and can be found between August and October. They pupate before winter sets in and overwinter as glossy brownish red pupae, in a loose cocoon buried among moss and leaf litter. The moths fly between May and July depending on their location. They are mostly nocturnal, being attracted to lights, but also sometimes fly by day. Sometimes the moths feed at Scabious and other flowers in the sunshine, but usually rest in day-time on the long branches of firs [read trees] overhanging paths in woods, where they maybe obtained by beating.

Shown here on the first part of my index finger, this shows how small it is.

The red-necked footman is found in Europe South to the Mediterranean and East across the Palearctic to temperate Asia, including Siberia as far east as the Amur River and China. It is found in parts of Ireland, and in the United Kingdom is present in the south-westerly counties of England and Wales. Records from other parts of the United Kingdom probably represent accidentals and not breeding populations. It is a woodland species found in deciduous and coniferous woodland, especially on spruce trees, but also on pine, oak and beech. It likes to be near streams in cool wooded valleys in upland regions.

For interest... on the German site, a Red-necked Footman is pictured mating with an Orange Footman [Eilema sorocula]... whether or not anything came of this relationship in 2015 we are not told????

From UK Moths:

Red-necked Footman Atolmis rubricollis
(Linnaeus, 1758)
Wingspan 25-35 mm.

A primarily woodland species, which is distributed locally in the south and west of England and Wales, and parts of Ireland. Occasional records from elsewhere [in the UK] are considered to be probable migrants.

The single generation flies in June and July, when it can sometimes be found flying in the daytime. It is also nocturnal, coming to light.

Feeding on lichens and algae growing on tree-trunks, the larvae live in autumn, and the species overwinters as a pupa.

Next Monday... The Orange Footman....

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Sources

Other than Wikipedia.... and personal observations!
Moths and Butterflies of Europe and North Africa [ also known as Leps.it]
A superbly illustrated site.... marvellous on the Micromoths...
but difficult to use on a tablet/iPad.... an awful lot of scrolling needed.

Lepidoptera.eu   An excellent resource... with distribution maps

UK Moths This is quite a simple site... but nicely put together...
and if you wait for them to come up... UK distribution maps

The German site Lepiforum.de - For really good samples of photos...
including museum specimens: to use....
Enter the Latin name and then select the Latin name from the list of pages found.
There is probably a lot more on this site... but I don't read [or speak] German!!

Moth Mondays - The Rosy Footman

MOTH MONDAYS

The Rosy Footman

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Arthropoda

Class: Insecta

Order: Lepidoptera

Superfamily: Noctuoidea

Family: Arctidae

Genus: Miltochrista
Species: Miltochrista miniata

Perhaps the prettiest of the Footmen is...
The Rosy Footman [Miltochrista miniata] la Rosette

They are a very distinctive moth....
pale flesh- yellow forewings with a rosy pink blush towards the outer edge
with a black squiggly line... like a sine wave... with black oval dots towards the hind edge.
There is also an angled black line at the thorax end of the forewing....
and pale yellow hindwings with a yellow to grey abdomen.
It is Footman sized, but holds its wings more like the Tiger Moths.

It is cold in the early mornings... you can see the dew on this.

The caterpillars are still known as woolly bears, but look more like a shoe polishing brush, certainly not woolly!!
"lepiforum.de" has good pictures....
this one and this one in particular show the shoebrush.



The Rosy Footman is a moth of the family Arctiidae. It is found in the temperate parts of the Palearctic ecozone Europe, through to Japan, but may be replaced by Miltochrista rosaria in the East Palearctic. (Looks the same in pattern.... but is yellow)

The wingspan is 23–27 mm.
Flesh-coloured ground colour, rose-red margin to the forewing, and on this wing a black dentate line beyond the middle, and black, elongate spots before the margin. In the male the costa is curved upwards beyond the apex of the cell.
((In ab. rosaria (now full species Miltochrista rosaria), which is commoner in the east of the area of distribution than in the west, and is perhaps a distinct species, the ground colour is more yellow; and in ab. crogea the wings are quite pale yellow, the forewing being edged with bright yellow.))

The moth flies from June to September depending on the location
[July and August in the UK].
Often occurs singly, in broadleaf and mixed forests, on moors, at road-side ditches, on umbellifers or scabious.

Egg oval, yellow. Larva grey, with brownish head, with long and dense hairs, hibernating, until June on lichens on walls and fences. The caterpillars feed on lichen. Pupa black-brown, abdomen with yellow incisions, in a cocoon densely intermixed with hairs.

This one is lit more from underneath...
but the three pictures here show only slight variation.

Next Monday... Another less ordinary footman....

________________________________________________________

Sources

Other than Wikipedia.... and personal observations!
Moths and Butterflies of Europe and North Africa [ also known as Leps.it]
A superbly illustrated site.... marvellous on the Micromoths...
but difficult to use on a tablet/iPad.... an awful lot of scrolling needed.

Lepidoptera.eu   An excellent resource... with distribution maps

UK Moths This is quite a simple site... but nicely put together.

The German site Lepiforum.de - For really good samples of photos...
including museum specimens: to use....
Enter the Latin name and then select the Latin name from the list of pages found.
There is probably a lot more on this site... but I don't read [or speak] German!!

Moth Monday - an alteration

The moth group that I was intending to put up is taking too long to put together....
so your moth for Monday next will be what is perhaps the prettiest of the Footmen....

The Rosy Footman

Moth Mondays - The Jersey Tiger

MOTH MONDAYS

The Jersey Tiger

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Arthropoda

Class: Insecta

Order: Lepidoptera

Superfamily: Noctuoidea

Family: Erebidae

Tribe: Arctiini
Genus: Euplagia
Species: Euplagia quadripunctaria
[aka: Callimorpha quadripunctaria]

Another highly recognisable moth next to the Garden Tiger and Cream-spot Tiger  is the Jersey Tiger[Euplagia quadripunctaria] l'Ecaille chinée.
Totally unmistakable... it is a "zebra" marked moth...with delta wings when at rest.

They are a very distinctive moth....
black forewings, very rarely through to almost white....
with white/cream, streaks on the former... through to the reverse in the case of the latter...
and rich carmine hindwings with a pattern of three black spots or blobs...
and an orange abdomen.
There is also a form, C.q. lutescens, which has yellow hindwings.

The moth seen here is is nectaring of Hemp-Agrimony.

The caterpillars, still called woolly bears, are still more like a bristly scrubbing brush than anything described as woolly!!


The forewing markings on the adults are not very variable...
but are almost always white/cream streaks on a black background...
Very rarely one finds examples of forewings that are almost completely white... with black markings.
The quadripunctaria part of the name comes from the two pairs of round spots at the end of the forewings

The hindwings are rich orange, with three black spots....
Here is an example.....

This is the only picture I have with the forewings at all open

It is considered a day-flying moth, although I have caught at least one individual in the moth trap. The adult wingspan is 52–65 millimetres, and they fly from July to September, depending on the location. It has been noted that they tend to fly close to Eupatorium cannabinum [Hemp Agrimony], where they are supposedly hard to notice because of their camouflage... not that I've noticed the latter effect!!

The caterpillars are polyphagous [which basically means "able to feed on various kinds of food"], feeding from September to May on nettles (Urtica) and raspberries(Rubus), dandelion (Taraxacum), white deadnettle (Lamium), ground ivy (Glechoma), groundsel (Senecio), plantain (Plantago), borage (Borago), lettuce (Lactuca), and hemp-agrimony (Eupratoria). The insect overwinters as a small larva.[

It can be found in Europe from Estonia to the Urals and West Russia in the North... down to the Mediterranean in the South... including the Greek Islands, especially Rhodes.... where large groups of adults of subspecies E. q. rhodosensis can be found on occasion aestivating (sheltering from the summer heat) in Petaloudes, in a place that has become known as the 'Valley of the Butterflies'. Pauline has seen this for spectacle herself whilst on a botany/birdwatching and Greek history tour.
It is slowly moving further North in the UK... where, in Victorian times, it was only known in the Channel Islands... hence the English name... and "one location in Devonshire"....and from 2004 has regularly been recorded as far north as London.

Settled conveniently on our lounge window...
with some Hemp Agrimony in the background....
this shows how translucent the wings of this Tiger moth are.

And again at night...

If you look on this Wikimedia page you will see that the dark forewings have white slashes coming inward from the leading edge.... there are always four main ones...
a small one near the hinge and two at the bottom forming a V...and one in between these.
Between the main ones, there can be small white markings... ranging from a dot on the leading edge to a finer slash of white.
But otherwise they are pretty much a constant shape.
When the wings are closed at rest, the two Vs form a Saltire with the four dots at the centre.

There is also a subspecies... rhodosensis... which can be seen in vast numbers in the valley of the butterflies on Rhodes... as mentioned, Pauline has seen these on a trip there.
There is a picture of a group of seventeen of them on the German moth and butterfly forum... lepiforum.de

And this week a bonus moth...

The Scarlet Tiger

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Arthropoda

Class: Insecta

Order: Lepidoptera

Superfamily: Noctuoidea

Family: Erebidae

Tribe: Arctiini
Genus: Callimorpha
Species: Callimorpha dominula

[Another highly recognisable moth of the Tigers is the Scarlet Tiger [Callimorpha dominula] l'Ecaille lustrée or l'Ecaille marbrée.
Totally unmistakable... it is a very dark...almost black but metallic green moth...with yellow and creamy-white blobs on the forewing and, normally, bright scarlet hindwings with black markings. The thorax is the same colour as the forewings with two yellow lines, one each side... the abdomen is usually bright scarlet with a black stripe running down the middle.
The one pictured on this page is the only one we've seen here.... yet.

The scarlet tiger moth (C. dominula, formerly Panaxia dominula) is a colourful moth of Europe, Turkey, Transcaucasus, northern Iran.
It is found in alluvial [riparian] forests, deciduous wet forests and damp mixed forest.

The caterpillars feed on many species including comfrey, willow, nettle, blackthorn and other Prunus species and poplars. The adults fly by day in June and July.

It can occur in rare colour forms, one with yellow hindwings and body and one with extended black on hindwings. There is one on the Leps.it page that has completely black hindwings with orange markings! [Follow the link, click on Arctiinae (Sub family) in the left-hand-side column...then look for the second main grouping Arctiinae Arctiini Callimorphina.... it is the first entry... click on the blue script dominula...]

This is the Garden Tiger [left] and the Jersey Tiger [right]

Next Monday... a group of moths covering all the grey Footman types....

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Sources

Other than Wikipedia.... and personal observations!
Moths and Butterflies of Europe and North Africa [ also known as Leps.it]
A superbly illustrated site.... marvellous on the Micromoths...
but difficult to use on a tablet/iPad.... an awful lot of scrolling needed.

Lepidoptera.eu   An excellent resource... with distribution maps

UK Moths This is quite a simple site... but nicely put together.

The German site Lepiforum.de - For really good samples of photos...
including museum specimens: to use....
Enter the Latin name and then select the Latin name from the list of pages found.
There is probably a lot more on this site... but I don't read [or speak] German!!

Moth Mondays - The Ruby Tiger

MOTH MONDAYS

The Ruby Tiger

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Arthropoda

Class: Insecta

Order: Lepidoptera

Superfamily: Noctuoidea

Family: Erebidae

Tribe: Arctiini
Genus: Phragmatobia
Species: Phragmatobia fuliginosa
(Arctia rubricosa)

A change for this week... another Tiger... but quite a "plain" one... the Ruby Tiger [Phragmatobia fuliginosa] l'Ecaille cramoisie...
a small moth, much attracted to windows at night.
Called by someone on an insect forum I use... "The Burlesque"!!

They are an attractive moth.... and here, very frequently observed!!
A brown, furry thorax and brown forewings, occasionally grey-black in the more northern forms.... hide a secret....
it is the hind wings of this moth that are the spectacular part...
here mainly black with a scarlet edge....
[see below for description of the base form which is almost reversed]....
and the ruby-red and black-striped abdomen.

The hind wings of this one are closer to what is expected...
but still contain a lot of black.  If you look carefully....
you can just make out a paler ring around the bigger spot on the righthand forewing.
Also we are beside the Aigronne...
so there are three waterboatmen and a mayfly in this picture.

The caterpillars, whilst still called woolly bears, are yet again more like a bristly scrubbing brush than anything described as woolly!!


Much smaller than the previous two Tigers.... the wingspan is 35–45 mm
The 'reference' species has the thorax and forewing dark reddish brown with a blackish comma-shaped (?) spot at the centre of the wing, edged with carmine (?).
Hindwing carmine, more or less colourless in the leading edge of the wing, with more or less confluent black spots before the margin and at the apex of the central area of the wing.
The name-typical / reference form P. fuliginosa has the forewing rather densely scaled and the hindwing bright rose-red with distinct black spots.
Underside strongly suffused with purple-pink.
There are numerous subspecies....

Most possibly borealis ...
the wing is transparent enough to show the pale leading edge of the hindwing.

P.f. borealis has vivid black markings and in which the red is confined to the sides of the abdomen and the anal part of the hindwing.

Most probably P.f. borealis....
the forewing is almost completely without scales....
and you can clearly see the red of the hindwing.

P.f. subnigra has a very dark forewing but must not be confused with the northern form;
it is scarcely darker than true fuliginosa, and not so transparent as borealis.
P.f. flavescens has both the abdomen and hindwing in yellow instead of red.

This is one from the underside....
the odd grey blobs are where I have tried to tone down reflections.
[My little camera has a built in LED ring-light.]

The moth flies twice, in May and from July to August depending on the location....
and if there is a second brood.

The egg is reddish grey.
The larva is light or dark grey with a black brown head.
The entire body is covered with pale, rusty hairs; these hairs are always more black brown in placida, and sometimes so in fuliginosa. There is a visible yellow stripe down the back with pairs of black and white spots beside the hair tufts.
It can be found in June, late autumn and after hibernation in April, on low-growing plants, on high-roads, railway embankments and waste fields.
On warm days in the winter the larvae sometimes leave their hiding-places and are then found on footpaths and roads, running about quickly.
The caterpillars feed on various herbaceous plants:
Salix sp, Rubus fruticosus, Prunus spinosa, Filipendula ulmaria, Plantago lanceolata, Senecio jacobaea , Taraxacum officinale .
The pupa is black with the abdomen marked with yellow in the segmental incision

This is a really good example of the ordinary, foxy brown 'base' version....
you can clearly see the ring around the larger of the black dots...
but as for it being "carmine".... that's debatable!

Next Monday... The Jersey Tiger and bonus....the Scarlet Tiger....

________________________________________________________

Sources

Other than Wikipedia.... and personal observations!
Moths and Butterflies of Europe and North Africa [ also known as Leps.it]
A superbly illustrated site.... marvellous on the Micromoths...
but difficult to use on a tablet/iPad.... an awful lot of scrolling needed.

Lepidoptera.eu   An excellent resource... with distribution maps

UK Moths This is quite a simple site... but nicely put together.

The German site Lepiforum.de - For really good samples of photos...
including museum specimens: to use....
Enter the Latin name and then select the Latin name from the list of pages found.
There is probably a lot more on this site... but I don't read [or speak] German!!