Mother Shipton

Monday was a stunning day for butterfly ID training in the west - 26 degrees and wall to wall sunshine...a relief as I had left Edinburgh in a glove-requiring haar chill at 7.30am. Our new UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme transect on NCN7 at Gailes was aflutter with Small Copper butterflies, and pillarbox-red and black Cinnabar moths, but the new one for me was another day-flying moth, the Mother Shipton. I had only just read about it in the morning session, and then managed to snap one in the early afternoon. It's a grassland species around from May to July, named after a 16th century prophetess due to the witch-like faces on the wings. I tried to read more about Old Mother Shipton but after an evening of watching Twin Peaks, it was too much spookiness...