Mystery Moth
For those of you know I don’t know personally, one of my hobbies is keeping and breeding leaf insects. The typical hobbyist food of leaf insects in the UK is bramble so every week or so I find myself out in the countryside with a carrier bag and pair of scissors taking some leaves back home (all whilst trying not to get spotted by someone else so I don’t have to explain myself and look like a weirdo!).
At this time of year of course hundreds of different invertebrates use bramble as a food source or a place to hide and so I do my best to choose leaves without spiders on, cookoo spit and so on so they can carry on to adulthood.
However a few weeks ago I missed something. And that something was a couple of caterpillars. These lived perfectly happily with the leaf insects, feeding on the fresh bramble leaves that I gave them until they both pupated.
In the picture above you can see both one of the caterpillars and the other having already turned into a pupae.
The questions is – what are these pupae going to turn into? My assumption due to (a) their size and (b) the way they both pupated down on the ground rather than attaching themselves to a plant are that they are moths rather than butterflies but only time will tell. I also believe they are the same species due to the similarity in appearance of both the caterpillars and they resultant pupae.
Assuming they hatch out successfully I’ll try to get some photos and let you know what appeared!
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Comments (2)
Hi
Your larva looks like Common Quaker too me, the creamy stripe at the back is fairly diagnostic.
Graeme
Graeme,
Good call. Looking over the Common Quaker I’m pretty sure you’re right too. Thanks so much for leaving a comment and helping me out!
Warm regards,
Richard