Caterpillar crisis

The caterpillars are now down to four ... and they are eating almost non-stop. Over the weekend they have chewed every piece of green, both leaf and bud of the Nasturtiums - they even began to munch down some of the stems with their voracious appetites. I have to confess ... I became concerned that nothing else was to their liking - the thick green hairy leathery leaves of the foxglove was not an option. Neither was the short almost prickly heather. The soft velvet green of the Lady's Mantle ... although long ago eaten by country people was obviously not peppery enough for the little 'herd' of caterpillars. They turned their faces away from fuchsia and pansy ... so I placed a small cabbage leaf on top of one of the lower stems of the Nasturtiums - but will they find it? It would be a pity if after all this time they were to starve and fail to complete their natural cycle and pupate.

At around 11.30 pm, I thought I would see if they had found the cabbage leaf. One had clambered onto it and was munching around its edge. The others were still ambling about on the Nasturtium. Then a strange sight caught my eye. One of the caterpillars that had clambered along a stem near to the fence had something on its back. I got the torch. The something turned out to be a slug that was slithering over the top of the caterpillar. A few years ago I wouldn't have thought anything about this but recently I have noticed that the diets of slugs are changing. Over the last year I have caught them eating meat, tinned tuna, bread, biscuits and porridge oats - in fact I have seen them nibbling at anything that wasn't moving. The question that I asked myself was would a slug eat a caterpillar if they would eat all of these other things? As I was unsure, I removed the slug ...

The caterpillar of the Large Cabbage White butterfly

Sunday's caterpillar pickings ... with one solitary small snail

Caterpillars picture taken on Saturday

Caterpillars picture taken on Friday

Caterpillars picture taken on Friday