Helen Dawson struck again in December when a Golden Twin-spot emerged from a pupa that she found in orchids at Dobbies Garden Centre, Stirling. The species is a rare migrant largely to southern England but it also arrives in the UK as an import in potted plants. Presumably it is as a result of such imports that the species is said to be breeding in one of the biomes in the Eden Project in Cornwall. The orchids in which Helen found the pupa probably came from a nursery in Netherlands so one wonders if this nursery also has a breeding population.
Like Pale Pinion, Confused was a species that I included in an appendix of my checklist that listed species that had not been recorded in the three vice counties but which might be expected. Photographs taken of a capture made by Helen Dawson at Fallin , near Stirling have recently been critically examined and are undoubtedly the first acceptable record for the area.
The Pale Pinion is moving north and, in my checklist I revealed how it had been found in several vice counties of central Scotland but not in vice counties 86, 87 and 99. However, in August and September 2010, Stan Campbell proved that it has arrived in Dunbartonshire (vc99) when he sent me photographs of two that he found nectering in the Renton area. Moving into 2011, I added it to the Stirlingshire (vc86) list when I caught one in a trap at Mugdock Country Park on 10th April and another in Lennoxtown on 18th April. Note that the species emerges in the autumn, hibernates as an adult and re-emerges in the spring.
