Moth Mondays - The Cream-spot Tiger

MOTH MONDAYS

The Cream-spot Tiger

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Arthropoda

Class: Insecta

Order: Lepidoptera

Superfamily: Noctuoidea

Family: Erebidae

Tribe: Arctiini
Genus: Epicallia
Species: Epicallia villica
[aka: Arctia villica]

Possibly the most recognisable moth next to the Garden Tiger is the...
Cream-spot Tiger [Epicallia villica] i'Ecaille fermière or i'Ecaille villageoise.
In fact it is often mistaken for the Garden Tiger....
understandable as the wings are almost the reverse of the former.
The female is a day flyer.... the male only flies at night...
not entirely correct... they both fly at night...
but if you see one in flight during the day, it is most probably a female.

They are a very distinctive moth....
black forewings, occasionally very dark brown....
with white/cream, slightly rectangular blobs...
and rich egg-yolk yellow hindwings with a pattern of black spots or blobs...
and an orange, through to bright-red at the tip, abdomen.

This is a typical Cream-spot Tiger.

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


The forewing markings on the adults are also quite variable...
but are almost always white/cream splodges on a black background...
In Leps.it and Lepidoptera.eu, there are examples of forewings that are almost completely white... with black markings. Here, they are not so variable.

You will notice that apart from the example on the right, there is very little variation here.
Also... the darkest example has almost yellow hindwings...
rather than the egg-yolk yellow of the examples that follow.

The hindwings are rich egg-yolk yellow, with black spots....
Here are three examples.....

They also have a much more delta-winged shape than the Garden Tiger.

The nice delta-shape.... but not as delta-winged as the Jersey Tiger.

It has a wingspan of 55 to 68 millimetres
Normally nocturnal, the females fly by day.
It is found across the Western Palearctic...
and as far north as West Siberia and reaches North Africa and Southwest Asia.
It inhabits woodland, woodland edges and areas with bushes and hedges and sunny open grassy areas....and can be found resting on leaves.
These moths are most common in March to July, in meadows, grasslands, and scrubby areas.
The caterpillars hatch in late July, winter semi-underground or in deep leaf-litter and pupate May of the following year...they are quite sensitive to frost... often seen in the spring as they look for somewhere to pupate
They feed on low growing, non-woody plants...plantains, deadnettles, blackberries and dandelions, etc.

The Cream-spot Tiger is very photogenic from underneath...
the sub-marginal edge of the forewings and
the lead-edges of the hindwings are both red.
(for what Sub-marginal means see Susan's comment)

Next Monday... the Ruby Tiger....

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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!!

"The Night Visitors"

The weather is warming...
slowly...
v..e...r....y....
slowly.
Too slowly for things "potager"-wise....

But it is bringing out the moths...
and Monday night we had two lovely visitors...
firstly a few pictures of the Giant Peacock Moth [Saturnia pyri] Grand-Paon-de-nuit.
We had them around, around this time last year, so keep your eyes open local folks... or those further south... as Susan pointed out to me last year, these are really on the Northerly edge of their range...

The cat can't believe it!!
Another one, just like last year...
she then asked to go outside...
but, on sniffing the air, decided not!!

Most definitely a male... just look at those "comb-like" antennae... but, read on...

"She's" probably pumping out pheromones... hoping a male will be downwind...
how far downwind I know not... but with the size of those wings...
he might well be many miles away and still reach her...
despite not being able to feed.

Normally it is the male that has the feathery antennae to detect the female's pheromones... but as "he" was still here this morning... and warming up too fast in the morning sunlight [yes... sunlight, folks]... I moved it into a more shaded position... and noticed that "she" had the big, rounded, bulbous body of a female... so, she-he... I'm now not sure...

A cuddly moth?

Or just plain strokeable???

Or... is it an alien??

It is trying to get in!!!

Hope it hasn't got a glasscutter!!!!

The other visitor was equally striking....
a Cream-spot Tiger [Arctia villica / Epicallia villica] Écaille villageoise
We get five different species of Tiger here... Garden, Jersey, Scarlet and Ruby being the other four.
But the Scarlet is the rarest and the Cream-spot follows close behind... this is only the third "known" visit.

Posing with a sloughed snakeskin... but keeping well out of the way of the Black & White moth-muncher anyway!!

Here the striking orange hindwings are being flashed...

... and now the bright scarlet body... these colours are to warn predators that...
"I don't really taste very nice... so go and eat something else... please!!"

I managed to catch this one and get it outside... but it came back to the window...

How's this for a striking colour display?!

and yesterday morning it was still on the front step so I managed to get a few shots of it without using the flash...

Handsome from the side isn't he...

But I'm not sure what he can hide on wearing this jacket!!

He was right where a foot was likely to smear him all over the front step, so I carefully moved him to the ground at the side and managed this final shot into the bargain!

Camouflaged? I think not... perhaps that is why the warning colours are so striking??

A mainly "Picture Post".... but I've tried to put in some relevant information as well...san
and  Susan says it has another trick up its sleeve... an anti-bat sonic avoidance technique...