A couple of days ago, Bruce spotted this caterpillar crawling on the way of the house. It was a bit awkward to see well there so we carefully put a bit of cardboard near it and once it crawled on (helpfully) we moved it a little so we could get a good look at it.
I think this worried it a little as it positioned itself like this, in a kind of ‘big and scary with dagger raised’ position:
Not quite so scary from the side – you can see it has hunched itself up to make its front view bigger and scarier:
Once it had relaxed a little it lowered its ‘hunch’ and looked more like a normal caterpillar (well, apart from its strange dagger/horn!):
And off it went, looking less and less scary by the minute (but rather photogenic!):
After some research, this turns out to be the caterpillar of the Grey Dagger Moth. Sadly not because it has a dagger sticking up out of its back, but because the moth has patterns on its wings that look a little like daggers
Inspired By
