Silver Y
Autographa gamma
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Named for a silver letter Y on each wing, and it flies here from southern Europe every year.
A medium-sized, mottled grey-brown moth with a clear silvery-white mark shaped like a letter Y — or the Greek gamma — on each forewing. Silver Y moths reach Dumfries as migrants every year, in numbers that vary from a handful to a mass arrival, and can be found nectaring at flowers by day as well as at night, with a distinctive rapid, whirring hover.
Behaviour
It feeds like a tiny hawk-moth, hovering at a flower head with wings a blur and probing with a long proboscis, and will do so in broad daylight. It cannot survive a British winter in any life stage, so every individual here is either a migrant or the offspring of one. Caterpillars feed on a very wide range of low plants including nettle, clover and garden crops.
Migration
Silver Y moths breed in southern Europe and North Africa and migrate north each spring and summer, some reaching Scotland. Their offspring attempt a return migration in autumn; none survive the winter here, so the population resets every year.
When to see it
Quick facts
- Family
- Owlet moths (Noctuidae)
- Wingspan
- 3–4.5 cm
- Status
- Migrant; cannot overwinter in Britain
Photo by Olei, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons