When you see one of these moths, however, you may be quite sure that it is a male; for the female has no wings at all, and looks just like a little greyish-white grub, with six rather long legs. She lays her eggs on the twigs of oak trees, and the little caterpillars hatch out in May. I cannot describe them, for they are all sorts of different colours, so that you may easily find fifteen or twenty, no two of which are quite alike.
PLATE XXXVIII
THE WINTER MOTH (2 and 3)
This is perhaps the very commonest of all our British moths. It simply swarms in all parts of the country, and on any mild day from the beginning of November till the end of January you may see it in hundreds, resting on fences and tree-trunks. And after dark it visits almost every street-lamp, and sits on the glass gazing at the flame within. But if you want to see the female you must look for her very carefully, for she is a little grub-like creature with hardly any wings at all, very much like that of the “spring usher,” except that she is brown instead of white. You may often find her hiding in the cracks of the bark of fruit trees, to which the caterpillars sometimes do a very great deal of damage.
These caterpillars differ a good deal in colouring, for sometimes they are light green, and sometimes they are dark green, and sometimes they are smoky brown. But they always have a black stripe down the back, and three white ones on either side. There is hardly a tree or a bush on the leaves of which they do not feed, and in May and June you may often see them in thousands and thousands.
1. Mottled Umber, male2. Mottled Umber, female
3. Mottled Umber Caterpillar