Can anyone kindly help my granddaughter to ID this very small caterpillar - currently about 1cm long. I'll thank you by updating this post because I'm having the recently-discussed Comment problems (and am grateful for the advice given, which I'm working on). Our best guess so far is Yellow-tail. Martin Wainwright, Thrupp, Oxon
Thanks very much Dave and Tim. She found the cattie near dead ivy leaves on the ground and a beech hedge and 'rescued' it because there didn't seem much for it to eat. I'll also check out that very helpful link. She wants to try to rear it, so I'm suggesting a mixed diet based on the poss IDs. Very much obliged. I tried again to do a Comment but no luck yet. All warmest and thanks too for speed M
Hi Martin,
ReplyDeleteDo you know where it was found/what food-plant it was on? Trying to identify early-instar caterpillars can be quite tricky because they often change their markings as they grow and the books only ever show what they look like in the final instar. At this time of year I would automatically have thought "Footman" because it is at the correct size and stage for one of them - I've already seen a 7mm Common Footman larva in the garden here this month. However the orange stripe doesn't fit one of them and to me it actually looks closest to White Ermine, although that species shouldn't be at the larval stage now (it usually over-winters as a pupa).
Very tentatively, I am wondering if it might be a Jersey Tiger: it was the orange dorsal stripe and the lateral line of paired white spots that made me think of it.
ReplyDeleteThere were two factors against this: the first is that it may be too small for JT, but I don't have a clear idea of how big it is in your photos. On the other hand, it may not be too small: the field guide says "overwinters when small" and I have only previously seen them in April when they are larger.
The second issue was I can't see any orangey tufts that are present in the final instar - I don't know if they are present in earlier instars. While Dave was writing his comment, I was trying to find photos of non-final instar caterpillars online. Lepiforum.de has some photos of earlier instars: go to
https://lepiforum.org/wiki/page/Euplagia_Quadripunctaria#Lebendfotos-Juengere_Raupenstadien
(Sorry that comments don't support hyperlinks, so you'll have to copy the whole thing and paste it into the address bar of your browser). I am more encouraged by these images.
If you know what it was found on, you could try rearing it.