Identification

Unmistakable. Due to its rarity status a specimen or quality photo required for record acceptance.

Life cycle

One or two generations abroad. Overwinters as a larva abroad.

Larval foodplants

Larvae have not been found in Britain, but abroad they are on a wide variety of herbaceous plants.

Habitat

Could turn-up in any habitat.

History 1860-2010

In Moths of Great Britain & Ireland, vol. 9, pp. 97-98, there are two dots in their distribution map for Kirkcudbrightshire, one inland and one at the coast. They both occurred during 1961 when more than thirty records occurred in Britain. Previously there were only about forty records during 1900-60 in Britain. To further enhance the records the following was recorded by Baron Charles de Worms (1962) in the Suffolk Naturalists’ Society under ‘A Review of Lepidoptera in the British Isles During 1961,’ who says: ‘…It was during the last few days of August that some of the first records were made of the Crimson Speckled Footman (Utetheisa pulchella, L.), and during the next five weeks at least thirty were recorded in places from Cornwall to Kent, also several in Wales and two each from Ireland and the Scottish Lowlands.’

The inland record was of an adult female captured in Glen Trool late September by A. M. R. Heron whilst he was returning from Perthshire en-route to England (see A. M. R. Heron, Entomological Record & Journal of Variation 74: 117-119). He boxed the specimen and took it to George Hyde. There is a photograph of a Crimson Speckled in The Dictionary of Butterflies and Moths (1975) that was taken by George Hyde, and was probably of the above specimen. The coastal record (NX85) is without further detail.