A Biodiversity Information System for Cheshire, Halton, Warrington & Wirral

Living in the hills with heather moorland around, a Fox Moth has always been a possibility although we've never trapped one previously. On Wednesday night we had a female in the Robinson - she was a seriously-sized moth, a most welcome antidote to those pesky micros! Last night we trapped four more ladies - apparently only the female comes to light.

What's more, three had laid their eggs on the cartons in the trap, and one continued to lay more eggs when placed in a pot. The eggs are on a similar scale to their parents - huge - resembling small olives.

If anyone wants to try rearing some of these eggs, let me know. You could be rewarded by some magnificent caterpillars, of the sort a hill walker will trip over, only to see it lope off into the heather with his packed lunch in its jaws!

Cheers, Julian

Hi Julian

Your right male Fox moths rarely come to light. But when they do, they are quite handsome beasts to behold.

Regards
Greg

You're right Greg - we did get a male in the end as well (we caught 10 females and 1 male over their season in total).

We've also been waiting anxiously for the eggs to hatch - the only source of info on the internet we could find suggested 3 weeks should be the time it would take.

These took 6 weeks, but over the last few days 68 caterpillars have emerged.

Attached is a photo of the caterpillars before they were moved across to some bilberry. They seem to prefer the bilberry to egg carton!

Regards, Julian