Friday 31st March 2023
I found the caterpillar in the border on the underneath of a leaf in the garden
Vine Rustic moth caterpillar
Here’s the one from 2022
https://community.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/f/photography/280310/caterpillars-2022-share-your-photos-here/1404918#1404918
It’s been sunny then rainy on and off today I put the leaf behind my holly and put a stone on the leaf stem to stop it blowing away since it was crawling on the leaf so that it can continue and eating and then crawl off without going for a ride on a leaf in the wind and landing anywhere in or out of the garden before it gets a chance to crawl off where it originally planned to crawl where the leafs are its feeding on it got very windy and poured down not long after I came in but later it was sunny again.
Iv seen Ants on leafs and the wind literally pick the leaf up and take them for a a thrill ride on a leaf cause they were still on it which was admittedly quiet amusing to watch but did feell sorry for the poor ant cause it got thrown off as the leaf went down to land
so in order to save the caterpillar from the same fate as the ants I thought the stone will hopefully do the job so the caterpillar might be there tomarow Saturday 1st April it might or might not still be there regardless of weather the stone did keep it down or not. but the stone is normally enough to keep leafs down so hopefully it worked. theres lots of the same leafs as the one it was Nibleing so Hopefully it will still be there tomorrow.
it’s not very big and caterpillars usually start of small and eat to grow big enough then they enter there next stage of transformation I hope I’m lucky enough to see the process with this caterpillar the last time I had the chance to see a caterpillar go through the stages of transformation was 2019 and havnt had a chance to see the process again since then and It was the first time I got to see the stages of transformation in some butterflys small and large whites iv never seen the stages of transformation in a species of moth in the garden yet so I hope im lucky enough to see it go through the stages of transformation
but in any case I didnt know there was a caterpillar in my border so it was lucky. I don’t know if anyone else has seen any or not but cause iv seen a caterpillar some might be starting to apear so good time to start the caterpillar thread for this year so everyone can contribute to it again
1st April The leaf is still there but the Caterpillar has gone off somewhere it’s left some traces though cause the leaf on one of my plants have a hole that is a certain shape that have been munched in the border the same mark as on the leaf the caterpillar munched on
5th April 2023
Tortrix family moth Caterpillar. most likely Apple moth