One hot and sunny Sunday in early June 1988, an unusual event in itself in that most perverse of English summers, I was having tea in my garden in Clevedon, near Britsol, when I noticed, at my eye-level, a colourful moth caterpillar feeding on a spray of the adjacent Leyland Cypress, Cupressocyparia leylandii, hedge. Although it was the first of its species I had ever found, it was vaguely familiar, and hurrying indoors I quickly identified it from my reference books as Blair's Shoulder-knot, Lithophane leautieri (Butron 1991).