It is found on exposed rocky areas where its larval food plant occurs and overwinters as a larva.

Larvae of Lobesia littoralis feed in the flowers, shoots and leaves in the spring and seeds in the autumn.

[4][5] The pupa is slender and tapering, 12–14 mm long and is light reddish-brown with darker brown eyes, thorax and wings.

[3] Originally named Sphinx muscaeforme by the German zoologist Eugen Johann Christoph Esper in 1783, the genus was erected by Carl Linnaeus in his 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae.

Sphinx refers to the monument of the same name, near the great pyramid in Egypt, which has the body of a lion and the bust of a women.