The Mother Shipton Moth, (Callistege mi) is a moth

Moth

A moth is an insect closely related to the butterfly, both being of the order Lepidoptera. Moths form the majority of this order; there are thought to be 150,000 to 250,000 different species of moth , with thousands of species yet to be described...

 of the Noctuidae

Noctuidae

The Noctuidae or owlet moths are a family of robustly-built moths that includes more than 35,000 known species out of possibly 100,000 total, in more than 4,200 genera. They constitute the largest family in the Lepidoptera....

 family. It was classified by Carl Alexander Clerck

Carl Alexander Clerck

Carl Alexander Clerck was a Swedish entomologist and arachnologist.Clerck came from a family in the petty nobility and entered the University of Uppsala in 1726. Little is known of his studies; although a contemporary of Linnaeus, it is unknown whether he had any contact with him during his time...

 in 1759, and is also known under the name of Euclidia mi. In Finnish

Finnish language

Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

 it is known as Piirtoyökkönen and in German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 as Scheck-Tageule. Its habitat spans over most of Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, Siberia

Siberia

Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...

, the Far East

Far East

The Far East is an English term mostly describing East Asia and Southeast Asia, with South Asia sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons.The term came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 19th century,...

 and Asia Minor

Asia Minor

Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...

. On the British Isles

British Isles

The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and...

 it is most common in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

; less so in Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 and Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

. It flies by day, normally taking only short, rapid flights, and can be found in wasteland and other open habitats. The adult moth's forewing is 13 to 16 mm (0.51 to 0.63 inches) long, and the wingspan is 25 to 30 mm (0.98 to 1.18 inches). The stages of its life cycle are as follows: egg

Egg (biology)

An egg is an organic vessel in which an embryo first begins to develop. In most birds, reptiles, insects, molluscs, fish, and monotremes, an egg is the zygote, resulting from fertilization of the ovum, which is expelled from the body and permitted to develop outside the body until the developing...

: May September, larva

Larva

A larva is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle...

: June September, pupa

Pupa

A pupa is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation. The pupal stage is found only in holometabolous insects, those that undergo a complete metamorphosis, going through four life stages; embryo, larva, pupa and imago...

: July May, and imago

Imago

In biology, the imago is the last stage of development of an insect, after the last ecdysis of an incomplete metamorphosis, or after emergence from the pupa where the metamorphosis is complete...

: May July. It hibernates as a pupa, and does so in a cocoon among blades of grass, or right underneath the ground. Among its foods is the nectar of the white clover

White clover

Trifolium repens, the white clover , is a species of clover native to Europe, North Africa, and West Asia...

 and the creeping buttercup.
The popular, English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 name for this moth comes from the pattern on its forewing. This pattern resembles the iconic representation of Ursula Southeil

Ursula Southeil

Ursula Southeil , better known as Mother Shipton, was an English soothsayer and prophetess...

, known as Mother Shipton a sixteenth-century prophetess and witch. Mother Shipton is a mostly mythical character, who supposedly foretold the death of Cardinal Wolsey in 1530. Charles Hindley, a nineteenth-century bookseller, created a prophetic poem that he claimed to be by Shipley. This poem told of "Carriages without horses" and air planes, as well as predicting the end of the world in 1881.