Down by the compost heap something caught my eye, a patch of nettles that from a distance looked as though it was covered in black pea pod sort of things; further investigations revealed these beauties, as black as Whitby jet
I think they are the caterpillars of peacock butterflies, but of course what we really need is a butterfly man, remember him and his beautiful illustrations?
There are hundreds of caterpillars out there, Joe says there are so many, they may eat the house during the night (he has inherited his mothers over active imagination, poor lad, either that or he has been on strange PC games again).
They seemed to be emerging from places like this
Dressed in cropped trousers and sandals, I wasn’t for getting any further into the nettle patch, this is as close as it gets.
July 4, 2011 at 7:45 pm
They are indeed Peacock larva according to my British garden wildlife book, and they live in clusters on Common Nettle.
It’ll be wonderful if you see lots of butterflies later on. xx
July 5, 2011 at 6:17 am
I do see some butterflies ‘overwintering’ in the barn (well having read the link, I think that is what they are doing, previously I thought they were dead)
July 4, 2011 at 8:14 pm
As long as they only eat nettles !
You should get a cloud of beautiful butterflies soon .
July 5, 2011 at 6:15 am
It would be rather special if there was a cloud of butterflies… I’d not be happy if they were on my sweet peas or my marigolds!
July 4, 2011 at 10:35 pm
there is something very scary about the quantity of them!
July 5, 2011 at 9:19 am
We once had a plague of caterpillars like that in a tree here. What alerted me to their presence was the noise of them munching! They were getting through the leaves of, maybe a copper beech, at a frightening rate. A guest who saw them was all for destroying right away, but I couldn’t do that. Maybe they turned into something exotic and glamorous like yours are going to do.
July 6, 2011 at 3:37 am
GACK! Those look like a particularly fierce variety of tent caterpillars. At least yours turn into attractive butterflies. And anything that eats nettles before I can stumble into them can’t be all bad. But good grief, those look as if they could munch through an entire woodlot in no time at all.