30 Days Wild - day 22

Today we went out for a nature walk but all the excitement was happening at home. I have mentioned before that the children keep chrysalises that they find whilst digging in the garden, most of them have hatched into yellow underwing moths already.

This morning we had a huge surprise in the chrysalis box, an Amblyteles armatorius, a type of Ichneumon wasp. There are over 3000 different types of Ichneumon wasp in Britain alone so exact identification is quite a challenge.

This is a parasitic wasp which lays it's eggs on moth caterpillars, the larva then feeds on it's host until it dies and the wasp larva then pupates to become the above wasp.

This wasp hatched from a chrysalis obviously made by the caterpillar as it looked exactly the same as the other chrysalises, so the wasp continued it's life cycle after the caterpillar pupated.

These are the chrysalis cases that a lesser yellow underwing moth hatched from, as you can see they have kind of been burst from.

This is the chrysalis case that the wasp came out of, as you can see the outer chrysalis is exactly the same as the ones above the only difference being the method of hatching. The wasp has chewed a neat circle all around the top and popped the lid off. Fascinating!

I'll leave you with a photograph of the Amblyteles armatorius warming itself in the sun outside after it was released.

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.