Flowering Currant
I would take a jam jar to capture some
and take them home to keep so I could watch them as they changed first into
pupae and later into adults. I was fascinated by all of this at an early age
and still am! I used to learn about the species of insects I found by looking
them up in good books on the subject. I
used to have the Observer’s Book of Larger British Moths.
Magpie Moth
The Magpie Moth (Abraxas grossulariata) is a beautiful species of moth with white
wings dotted with black and yellow and a yellow body also marked with black.
Magpie Moth
It is in the Geometer moth family, or
Geometridae, and all species in this
group have very cute “looper” or “inchworm” caterpillars that, as the name
suggests, don’t crawl but make a loop out of their bodies as the pull the rear
end up to catch up with the head section. They can stretch out in front of
themselves as if they are testing or measuring what is ahead. Some types are
camouflaged to look just like twigs and are almost impossible to see when they
are completely still. Many types of caterpillar in this large family can also
spin a long thread of silk if they are dislodged from where they are feeding.
They can defy gravity by climbing back up these threads after all danger has
gone.
The caterpillars of the Magpie Moth are
a similar colour scheme to the adult moths and are mainly black and white like
the Magpie bird the species is named after. They change into shiny black pupae
striped with yellow. They are anchored loosely in a very flimsy cocoon that is
almost non-existent and is made in dead leaves or tucked away somewhere on the
bush the caterpillar fed on or near it.
The Magpie Moth was once a very common
species though for some reason its numbers have declined drastically in recent
years. . This is somewhat surprising
because it has a very wide range of food plants and besides the Flowering
Currant can also feed on Gooseberry, Plum, Spindle, Hawthorn, Privet and many
other shrubs and small trees. Maybe this decline is due to Climate Change
because the caterpillars are the stage of this moth that has to survive the
winter months.
Vapourer Moth
The second species of moth caterpillar I
could often find on the Flowering Currant bushes was the Vapourer Moth (Orgyia antigua). This is a really weird
insect because the females don’t look anything like a moth but more like a fat
woodlouse. They have no wings apart from tiny stubs and cannot eat either. Basically
they are a living bag of eggs and after mating with a male they lay their eggs
and then die.
The male Vapourer Moths get a much
better deal because they have normal wings which are coloured a rusty brown and
they fly by day and night.
Female Vapourer Moth
The caterpillars are really pretty
creatures with dark greyish bodies covered with hairs and tufts of hair in
yellow and blackish. The ones that will become female moths are much bigger
than those that are the males. They pupate in a proper silk cocoon that they
spin up somewhere on the bush or tree they are on. The female moths very often
stay put after emerging and actually lay their eggs all over their old cocoons.
They overwinter in this stage and hatch out in spring.
Vapourer Moth caterpillar
The Vapourer Moth is a very widely
distributed species and can sometimes become a pest because its larvae can feed
on a very wide range of plants, shrubs and trees besides the Flowering Currant.
Both species of moth gave me a lot of
joy when I was a youngster and, as well as teaching me about the sometime very strange
things that happen in the natural world, I learned how to look after them and see
to their needs. Later that summer I was rewarded by seeing the adults hatch
out.
