What a beauty! An Oak Beauty

First Oak Beauty of the year seen in the garden last night (6th March 2024). It’s a quite stunning creature, isn’t it? Sharp-eyed readers will note this is a geometer moth. So-called because their larvae (caterpillars), known as inchworms in the US, move in such a way as to give the appearance that they are measuring the earth, geo-meter, inch by inch.

This is a male Oak Beauty, you can tell from its enormous feathery antennae, which it often folds underneath its body to protect them.
This is a male Oak Beauty, you can tell from its enormous feathery antennae, which it often folds underneath its body to protect them.

You might also be thinking it looks like a Peppered Moth but with more colourful and more pronounced markings. Well, the Peppered Moth is a kissing cousin of this species, seen a little later in the year than peri-spring. The Oak Beauty is Biston strataria, the Peppered Moth is in the same genus, and is B. betularia. While the shape of the moth is very like the Peppered, the markings resemble those of some of the so-called carpet moths. By the way, they don’t eat carpets, but look decorative, like the luxury item that was a carpet back when the early lepidopterists were giving all these species their names.