Mark Parsons Author & Editor

Phil Sterling began his interest in moths before starting school, and developed his passion for micro-moths as a teenager. He holds the degree of MA (Oxon) in Zoology and his DPhil (Oxon) was on the ecology and biological control of the Brown-tail Moth. He is a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, and a member of the British Entomological and Natural History Society and British Ecological Society. He has worked in nature conservation research and practice for 30 years and is currently the lead ecological advisor for Dorset County Council. He has written and contributed to many publications, mainly on British micro-moths. Mark Parsons was born in Eastbourne, Sussex, and started recording moths in the long hot summer of 1976. He has a BSc in Biology, is a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society and is a member of the British Entomological and Natural History Society and the Societas Europae Lepidopterologica. He has worked as an entomologist for the Nature Conservancy Council and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, as well as a lepidopterist at the Natural History Museum, London. Currently based in Dorset, he has worked for Butterfly Conservation since 1999 overseeing their moth conservation efforts. He has produced many notes and articles in entomological journals, and authored or co-authored many papers and other publications on Lepidoptera and Lepidoptera conservation. Over almost forty years, Richard Lewington has built up a reputation as one of Europe’s finest wildlife illustrators. He first became interested in butterflies as a child when he inherited a cabinet of insects from his father. He studied graphic design at the Berkshire College of Art, and since leaving in 1971 has specialised in natural-history illustration. His meticulous paintings of insects and other wildlife are the mainstay of many of the modern classics of field-guide art, including Insects of Britain and Western Europe, Collins Butterfly Guide, Field Guide to Dragonflies of Britain and Europe, Field Guide to the Moths of Great Britain and Ireland, Pocket Guide to Butterflies of Britain and Ireland and Guide to Garden Wildlife. He was, for many years, the principal artist on the multi-volume series, The Moths and Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland. He has also designed and illustrated wildlife stamps for a number of countries, including a set of ten stamps of British butterflies for Royal Mail in 2013.