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.

off to the woods

   On Friday, we visited the woods, thinking it would be cooler in the shade of all those tall, leafy trees. We went to the woodland that was closest to the spot where we had previously found the baby grass snakes, dead in the road. My son was hoping to spot some more in the undergrowth alive this time, so that he could watch their natural movements and take photographs, but it was not to be.

   

    It was quite eerie as it was a new wood to us and quite dense in places. My son was convinced that we would become lost forever... continuously going round in circles, but we managed to find our way home again. We spotted many creatures and traces that they had been there before us with the binoculars and magnifying glass. As you can see my daughter has the philosophy, "examine ALL things closely"

     We saw these strange looking black and yellow caterpillars on the ragwort in a sunny clearing, which appeared to jump if we got too close to them. They are the larva of the cinnabar moth which we spotted nearby too.

     My son just loved running up and down the hills, and didn't mind too much that we didn't find any snakes this time. Maybe next time...

     All todays photographs were taken by my husband (found here) on location in the dark, scary woods!