A Vapourer update

25 Tuesday Nov 2025

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female Vapourer, flightless female moth, moth, Orgyia antiqua, The Vapourer, Vapourer moth

Yesterday’s walk took me past the location where I found A female Vapourer last week. She was still there, but dead. I knew the females died soon after laying their eggs but I presume she had emerged too late in the year to attract a male (the UK Moths website says ‘the adults are out from July to September, sometimes October in the south’) as there were no eggs. I know this is just the way Nature works sometimes but I still felt a little sad that this lovely moth hadn’t been able to complete her purpose in life.

A female Vapourer

18 Tuesday Nov 2025

Posted by sconzani in insects

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British moths, female Vapourer, flightless female moth, moth, Orgyia antiqua, The Vapourer, Vapourer cocoon, Vapourer eggs

The highlight of my walk last Saturday was finding my first female Vapourer moth (Orgyia antiqua), sitting on her cocoon, presumably newly emerged.

Now, you might look at her and think ‘That doesn’t look like a moth. Where are the wings?’ That’s the amazing thing about a female Vapourer – she’s almost wingless; her wings are so tiny that she’s unable to fly. Once she hatches, the female sits on her cocoon, as this one was, emitting pheromones and waiting for a male to fly by, notice and mate with her. Then, she’ll lay her eggs on the outside of her empty cocoon (as you can see on the other cocoon I found very close to the female, and which I also blogged about earlier this year: Vapourer pupa and eggs, January 2025). As she can’t fly, the female can’t feed, so she will die soon after laying her eggs.

Ominously, there were tiny parasitic wasps hanging around the female, presumably waiting to inject her eggs, so some of those eggs may not produce caterpillars come the spring.