Nature spot
I came across these black caterpillars a few days ago, all clustered together on a patch of nettles – not the most attractive organisms either. I didn’t know what they were – I mean which butterfly or moth species they belonged to.
The internet is a great thing and I identified them as the larvae of the Peacock butterfly, a fairly common insect of our part of the world. These larvae will go off and form pupae and will emerge as colourful Peacocks later this summer. This has always been a mystery to me. I can’t get my head round such a metamorphisis.
Here’s a photograph of the adult butterfly I saw last summer.
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