The rosy footman moth (Miltochrista miniata) has been recorded on Anglesey (Ynys Môn) for the first time in 2014, and since then it has spread to several sites on the island, including one garden in 2022.
This morning, after a gentle night – too cloudy to see the flight of Perseid meteors but mild enough to encourage the flight of moths – the author heads out to a Robinson light trap. The trap is 40 years old and somewhat shabby, and sits between the meadow plots in a wildlife garden like a tiny flying saucer. With a cuppa to hand, and joined by a familiar robin who knows this routine well, the live catch is examined.
A distinctive and toxic beauty
Among the hundreds of winged congeners peeping out, one immediately catches the attention – a rosy footman. Petite and delicately flushed with tones from peach to nectarine, the gently bowed forewings of this endearing little moth are inscribed with loops and dashes, like black hieroglyphs.
This distinctive coloration is thought to be a defensive device – a warning to predators such as birds that it is toxic. Its larva feeds on lichens from which it sequesters unique acids, rendering it unpalatable to most predators, right through to its adult stage.
Climate-driven expansion
As with many of Britain’s moths, the 20 species of footman moths are responding to the warming climate, and many have shown marked increases in range and abundance in the past 40 years. The rosy footman is well distributed in southern Britain, and is now expanding north and west as far as the maritime fringe of Wales.
But finding a rosy footman also brings to mind growing up in Sheffield in the 1960s, when airborne pollutants such as sulphur dioxide from heavy industry excluded most lichens, and no footmen were seen then. A series of clean air acts have since seen lichens return to the city, and recent sightings of rosy footmen from the north Midlands indicate environmental change for the better.
An ecological message
The rosy footman combines arresting charm with an important ecological message.
