One for...?

I don't know if the sighting of a Magpie Moth carries the same superstitious consequences as does the bird but if so then SteveandKerry will have a better day than me. Certainly the weather yesterday (I'm backblipping) was pretty dismal as the droplets on my kitchen window suggest.

This moth, Abraxas  grossulariata,  is interesting in that it is one of those beasts that have evolved an appearance that warns rather than conceals. Instead of fading into the background with camouflage,  its  black and yellow patterning on white render it highly visible both day and night, and indicate that it's best avoided as food.  Its caterpillars are similarly marked; indeed some have suggested that the central section of the pattern across both wings resembles its own larva as if to say "Don't touch me OR my kid!"

As long ago as 1834, a Mr Blyth,  a correspondent to the Field Naturalist's Magazine, noted that the Magpie Moth was rejected by insectivorous birds. "I have a nightingale" he says "that will readily take food from the hand... but the Magpie Moth he constantly refuses." Mr Blyth even tried depriving his captive birds [such were the days] of food for longer than usual and then offering a selection of moths of which only the Magpie was rejected. One was swallowed by a whinchat "but it did not take a second" and a tree-pipit took one in its mouth but then "on tasting, he refused".

It was not until 1994 that "a bitter tasting cyanoglucoside, sarmentosin, was isolated from the Magpie Moth... The concentration of carotenoids was also found to be exceptionally high." It was felt this property was defensive.
(I was delighted to see that the late great Dame Miriam Rothschild  - once described as 'Beatrix Potter on amphetamines' -  was involved in that discovery.)