Pale Pinion disturbed from its slumbers

On Saturday, while I was enjoying myself at the autumn indoor meeting of the Buckinghamshire Invertebrate Group, the latest named storm was taking out its wrath on a pergola by my front door.  While I was taking a post-meeting walk around College Lake, my wife phoned to tell me that our front door had been rendered inaccessible by displaced and fallen timber and all of the rambling rose that it had been supporting.

It is taking considerable effort to put everything back together again, not least because the now-liberated rambling rose is putting up quite a fight and really doesn't want to let me repair and reassemble the pergola so that I can once more deprive it of its freedom.

Most of the rose was supported by the pergola, but one stem had been trained onto a trellis on the wall of the house and yesterday I needed to untie it temporarily.  This revealed a Pale Pinion resting on the outer face of the wood of the trellis, having been "protected" by nothing more than a leaf of the rose.

Since I had now removed its cover, I potted the moth to protect it from predation.  It was in a kind of torpor and showed only slight reaction to the disturbance.  I assume that although they over-winter as adults, they spend the winter months in a resting state - looking at the phenological charts there are almost no observations between late November and mid-February.

Pale Pinion
Newton Longville, 11 December 2023

On the basis that "nature knows best", I'll put the moth back where I found it as soon as I have emerged victorious from my bloody battle.  I am not sure that this moth has made the best choice of where to spend the winter.  The trellis is close to the front door with a light that is frequently activated at night by a passing cat or fox, and the moth might have been attracted to the light.  Although the overhanging eaves give partial protection from rain falling straight down and the rose leaf might have provided some shelter from slanting rain, the location faces south-west and is, erm, fully-exposed to the prevailing winds!

Tim Arnold
Newton Longville, Bucks