This weekend I was after caterpillars. The weather was slightly better again, but not sunny enough to get butterflies fly. I spent two hours out on Saturday and almost three hours on Sunday. No luck on the caterpillar quest.
On Sunday, I only focused on finding the larvae of the Purple Emperor (Apatura iris) or the Lesser Purple Emperor (Apatura ilja). I also tried to spot a caterpillar of the Lesser Marbled Fritillary (Brenthis ino) whenever Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria) was around. Nothing!
I headed towards a biotope which is supposed to host at least the Lesser Purple Emperor. And I kept my eyes primarily on Goat Willow (Salix caprea). All I found were a couple caterpillars of moths (and again Small Tortoiseshells). I must check one more biotope next weekend. The species will soon enter the chrysalis stage of the metamorphosis, and it would be really cool finding some caterpillars before that.
Unfortunately I’m not that good determining caterpillars of moths. Therefore, most of the species below are undefined.
