Red List: Least Concern (LC). GB Status: Nationally Scarce B (Nb).

Identification

Usually distinctive.

Recording method

Both sexes fly by day in warm or sunny weather.

Life cycle

One generation. Overwinters as a pupa.Larvae July and August between spun leaves. Pupates in plant debris.

Larval foodplants

Downy Birch, Silver Birch and Bog-myrtle.

Habitat

Damp moorland and rough grassland.

History

First recorded for Dumfries and Galloway in 1860 for VC72 near Dumfries by Lennon who stated ‘I had the good fortune this year to take a fine variety of Melanippe hastata: it is larger and finer than the common kind, with much more pure white, and a fine pure white fringe, running round both wings’, in 1862 for VC73 at Dalskairth also by Lennon, and in 1898 for VC74 at Corsemalzie by Gordon who later ‘found it to be common and generally distributed in Wigtownshire, but being scarce of late. It had been noticed flying along stone dykes where bracken occurs on moorland in June’.