Scarce Light Plume at Dingestow

The late June heatwave brought an influx of Crombrugghia laetus (Scarce Light Plume) to Britain. This species breeds in Mediterranean Europe and North Africa and is generally a rare visitor to Britain, with most records coming from the west. The majority of the 2019 arrivals were south-western too, although there was a scattering of records inland.

I was thrilled to find a female (gen. conf.) C. laetus in my MV at Dingestow Court on the night of 30th June - not only is it Dingestow's first confirmed record of this species, it also exorcises the ghost of a probable C. laetus that I caught at Dingestow on 23rd June 2000 and sketched in my notebook (before the days of good digital cameras). There is one previous confirmed VC35 record: Roger Gaunt caught one at Livox on 26th June 2000. My 2000 Dingestow sketch was made before I was aware of Roger's catch, and when I thought that only three small, orange, white-banded plumes (genus Oxyptilus) occurred in Britain. I am 99.9% sure that my first record was also C. laetus, and that an influx to western Britain also occurred in late June 2000, although the British records on the Mothscount website don't show any others for 2000.

My June 2000 sketch - initially in pencil with ?Adaina microdactyla, then in blue biro Oxyptilus, then black biro notes once I had purchased the European Plume book and discovered that Crombrugghia spp. exist.