Chimney sweeper

I love it when this little moth suddenly shows up during the last couple of weeks in May. Its caterpillars feed exclusively on the low-growing white umbellifer Pignut and in our area colonies are restricted to the few fragments of unimproved meadows that industrialised farming has so far missed. I was particulaely to see this one in a small triangular ridge-and-furrow field in a sea of buttercups, clover and bird's-foot trefoil - the very last piece of unimproved permanent grassland in the whole parish. I'm doing my best to make people in the village aware of such gems on their doorstep, but the main (bizarre, to my mind) interest seems to be around protecting bright green fields growing a single species of grass or cattle fodder from any housing development!