whats this caterpiller ?

mountainy man

[IMG]http://C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\My Pictures\Picture\strange catterpillar\Picture 109.jpg[/IMG]can any one help identify this catterpiller i saw last july, amazing colours and quite large i thought . it was in the grass and spotted it before i could have run over it with the lawn mower.

Mothman

I assume you tried attaching/uploading/linking a/to photo?

"quite large" would you define this into an approximate length. Probably difficult considering length of time since sighting.

mountainy man

sorry about missing pic was trying to upload too large any way hopefully here it is next to a two euro coin

mountainy man

not great pic bit out of focus was with new camera !

Mothman

Yes this may be a struggle!
Would you attach a larger cropped photo (ie cut out much of the background) and make it day 800 pixels wide.

Any hair on the caterpillar?
Any projections, horns/bumps etc?
Was it moving at the time of sighting?
Describe the colours.
I assume this was in Sligo?

What vegetation is nearby around the lawn, species of trees...

mountainy man

hi mothman,

not sure how to do thr croping thing but here is another pic , am on mountain bog at 290 metres surrounded by spruce scotch pine ect but have planted oak alder goat willow hazel . it was making its way through the lawn and the colours on it really made me stop, it had no hairs just a smooth segmented body purplish red with yellow stripes as you can see.the two antenae seemed to be at the wrong end possibly to trick birds. have seen some large black hairy ones before and the lime green ones that devoured the leaves of the goat willow . hope this helps

Mothman

Ok, I've a very good idea what it is, but the date is bugging me.

I'm fairly sure it is Puss Moth
in its pre pupation colouration. I would not expect this stage in July, maybe late July I suppose. Would you double check the date.

Probably eating the goat willow. Caterpillars of many if not most species wander looking for pupation site and this is when they are most often noticed.

mountainy man

was august 3rd sorry. looks fairly similar to one of the pics, do you know why they have such mad colouring can't be great camoflague?

Mothman

Thanks for looking up date

Yes the colouring is a bit obvious to us, but predators see differently to us. I'll have to leave it to others to expand on how and what spectrum of light that birds see.

But the Larva are mainly green while eating the leaves. They usually pupate on branch, so it can be seen that the pupation colour matches the colour of branch matches better than the green colour.

mountainy man

thanks very much you have satisfied my curiosity, have a general book on insects has pics of moths but not of the other stages of development will try to find a better one , thanks again

Mothman

mountainy man wrote: »

thanks very much you have satisfied my curiosity, have a general book on insects has pics of moths but not of the other stages of development will try to find a better one , thanks again

The issue here, is that there are not any good printed guides on caterpillars. Caterpillars go through a number of stages (instars) when they shed their skins and their appearance can be markedly different with the different instars. This makes it more challenging.
The online guide http://www.ukleps.org/ is excellent but a complete novice needs to go through whole website. I'm not particularly knowledgeable about caterpillars, but I usually know what family it may belong to and narrow it down to a much smaller numbers of species quite quickly.

Adult moths is much easier regarding printed quides.

Field Guide to the Moths of great Britian and Ireland
Waring, Townsend and Lewington. c€35 (£30)
Make sure it is the "Revised edition" 2nd edition.
First edition 2003, 2nd edition 2009 has up to date Irish status and many other improvements
This guide covers nearly all of the larger moths in Ireland, though less than half the species. There are a lot of small moths!