Saturday 1 April 2017

A small caterpillar

This small caterpillar was in my moth trap this morning.





It was just under 1cm in length. I realise that it is not the best of photos but wondered if anyone had any ideas. There are a lot of December moth eggs in the trap that have been there all winter but this seems too large to have just hatched.

The catch of 65 moths (10 species) was a little down on the previous night (89 moths 13 species) but over the two nights I did record my first Shoulder Stripe, Brindled Beauty, Brindled Pug, Double-striped Pug and Powdered Quaker bringing my total number of macro moths to 25 for the year so far. (Only 2 micros though).

Andy Newbold, Sibford Ferris, Oxon.

3 comments:

  1. It looks too dark, but your caterpillar's outline reminds me of some of the Footman moths.

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  2. Hi Andy, I agree with Andy K that one of the Footman moths is a probability and at nearly 1cm it is likely to have walked to the trap rather than have been a fresh emergence from one of your egg-boxes. Most nights I find a Footman larva or two browsing on lichens growing on the fence next to my garden trap and they're a similar size to your example.

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  3. Thank you. It must have had quite a walk across the lawn for something so small!

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