Red List: Least Concern (LC). GB Status: Common.

Identification

Usually distinctive.

Recording method

Flies at dusk near the foodplant. Occasionally attracted to light.

Life cycle

One generation. Overwinters as a pupa, sometimes over a second winter.  Larvae mid-June to late July. Pupates in loose earth.

Larval foodplants

Ripening seed capsules of Bladder Campion and Sea Campion.

Habitat

Sea cliffs, especially limestone,  and rocky shorelines, hedgerows, field margins, woodland rides.

History

First recorded for Dumfries and Galloway in 1870 for VC73 in Colvend parish by White, in 1906 for VC73 at Luce Bay by Gordon who stated that ‘eleven larvae were taken from seed heads of Silene maritima, along Alticry shore, Luce Bay’.