Little Green Caterpillar

I thought I had my blip for today all sorted by lunchtime. A search round the garden found a lovely hoverfly, either eupeodes corolla or eupeodes luniger (thanks google!)He was feeding on the parsley flowers dancing from one to another hovering before landing to sup. They are to be encouraged in the garden as the larva have ferocious appetites for green fly. On the buddleia the mullein moth caterpillar is growing but as there is only the one I’m letting it be. I also found two of the baby bush crickets on the buddleia. I had wondered where they were. They have grown quite a bit and their bodies are about ½ inch long now. This would also explain some of the large bites taken out of the leaves. The hoverfly came along attracted by some black sticky droplets, possibly caterpillar or bush cricket poo, and proceeded to feed off them. The purple osteospermum is looking good and so is rosa ‘goldfinch’ Right that should do.

After lunch time for some gardening. Weeding the front bed there on a piece of long grass was this little green caterpillar. It was about ½ inch long with a little pea head and a slight fork tail and something we’d not seen before either in the garden or in the wild. Thinks……. Feeds on grass….. which butterflies have we had in the garden so far this year. My hunch was correct as I’m almost certain it’s a Speckled Wood caterpillar. I carefully brought it inside and got as closeup as I could get on my SX50, also used a x4 closeup lens. I then put it back in the grass. We’ll keep a look out for its pupa