Last of the Decade

Singletons of Winter Moth and Mottled Umber rounded off the decade for my garden last night along with the noctuid caterpillar below which was found crawling up the conservatory wall near the light.  At only 18mm it is an early instar so rather difficult to place because many species change considerably in appearance as they grow, but I think that it might be a rather dark form of Old Lady.  The markings, if not the ground colour, are a good match for the 26mm larva illustrated on Reg Fry's website www.ukleps.org (if anyone has other ideas about its identity, please let me know!).  Hopefully our ability to identify anything other than final instar caterpillars will improve immeasurably when the new field guide illustrated by Richard Lewington comes out in March (see here, pre-publication offers are available from other book suppliers too).

Possible Old Lady larva, Westcott 31st December 2019

Dave Wilton
Westcott, Bucks