30 Days Wild - day 27

Only a couple of days left now until the end of the project so I thought I would bring you an update on the cinnabar caterpillars as so many of you have been interested in following their progress.

They are now 10 days old and as you can see they finally have their stripes, not quite as brightly striped as they eventually become but definitely striped now.

They have travelled quite a way up the ragwort plant as most of them are now situated right at the top amongst the flower buds.

We have spotted quite a few of these vapourer moth caterpillars on our nature walks all usually in the same area, although they often have very slight colour variations of the tufts on their backs.

We also got to creep up on this small tortoiseshell butterfly as it was feeding on a flower, very beautiful markings.

30 Days Wild - day 23

Only a week left now of the 30 days wild project and today was a really cloudy day, threatening to rain all the time. So we have stayed close to home and mainly been on caterpillar watch. I did catch my youngest daughter wandering around the garden with a bucket of rat tailed maggots that she had fished out of the wildlife pond to get a closer look at.

These are the cinnabar caterpillars, they are 6 days old now and starting to go a slightly yellower colour and have lots of black spots. No stripes yet!

This is one of the rat tailed maggots my daughter was looking at, it is the larva of a drone fly.

30 Days wild - day 20

Today I bring you an update on the cinnabar caterpillars, they are now three days old and getting larger as you can see. The leaf they hatched on is now half gone.

They still haven't got their orange and black stripes yet, but we will keep you posted on their progress.

Caught this little bee feeding nearby just after the rain. We had seen hundreds of bees earlier at the allotment, there is a vacant plot near our plot and at the moment it is filled with poppies and bees. Wonderful to stand and watch!

At home later in the day, the children noticed that the rain had brought out many snails and decided to have a snail race. Snails are one of my daughter's garden favourites.

30 Days Wild - day 17

The moment we've all been waiting for has finally arrived, the cinnabar moth eggs have been hatching all day! We have watched for most of the day, it has been extremely exciting.

At first there were just one or two tiny caterpillars just a few millimetres long. If you click on the photographs to enlarge them you can see the empty egg cases looking like little bubbles and to the left of the hatched caterpillar another one eating it's way out of the case.

Then there were a few more, yellow when they first emerged and covered in tiny hairs. No sign of the familiar orange and black stripes yet.

The children have been so excited to be able to witness this first hand, you can see the caterpillars have started to eat the ragwort as they are filling up with a green colour.

Not many left now, this photograph was taken at around six a few hours after the first ones emerged. You can see that some of the caterpillars have eaten a lot and are mostly green, others which have just hatched are still yellow.

I wonder how long it takes for them to get their stripes... I guess we'll just have to keep watching.

30 Days Wild - day 16

It's been a very exciting day, much watching and much anticipating, the cinnabar moth eggs have been changing colour all afternoon. If you have been following I posted a photograph yesterday of the eggs and they were all yellow. We were hoping to see them hatch but the light is starting to go and I expect they will all be hatched by morning.

This first photograph was taken about three in the afternoon, some of them appear to be darkening. The next photograph was taken at about six in the evening, you can definitely see a difference.

If you look carefully it looks like a tiny hole is appearing in one of the eggs in the centre of the shot, where a little caterpillar is eating it's way out.

I will keep you updated as we know more and try to get some photographs of the newly hatched caterpillars.