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My father-in-law once handed me a handful of full grown Angle Shades moth caterpillars asking me if I could identify them, it was a good excuse for me to save them, he found them in the center of his prize Chrysanthemums, he was only able to find them by searching at night with a torch, when they were feeding. He was not happy as he grows these huge flowers for shows, and the caterpillars did a lot of damage. As the caterpillars feed on a wide range of wild and cultivated plants I suspected that the caterpillars were from other plants in the garden as my father-in-law protects the leaves and there is netting all around the sides and a roof built over the flowers. The resulting moth folds its wings in a unusual way, its wings are creased instead of flat, looking like a crinkled autumn leaf, to help camouflage when resting on falling leaves or on a tree bark. They fly between May and October and have up to two generations a year, it is also a common migrant.
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