Creepy crawly caterpillars, creep crawl creep. Creepy crawly caterpillars hear them creep. Crawly crawly creep. Creepy creepy crawl. I’ve got caterpillars to share with you all!!

Hello friends!

Firstly, d’ya like my song?

Secondly, ever bought a plant at a garden centre and ended up bringing aphids/bugs home?

Seeing as today kicks off Butterfly Conservations Butterfly Count I thought I’d share a look at the new peeps I’ve been caring for! (Warning its kinda a long post!)

Well, as intoned in the above verse I’ve had caterpillars!!! I’ve actually set up and built my own butterfly house so that I can raise and release butterflies I find in the garden. Although I didn’t actually find these chaps in the garden (I found them in the kitchen), I decided I wanted to add a couple more thistles to my growing collection of plants because I love them, especially the pink ones! (there’s something punky about them) and while I was trying to find a moment to plant them I realised something was eating them…well it turned out to be caterpillars – Painted ladies to be precise! One of my favourites!!

Setting up and creating my own butterfly house to give them their best chance in life has been awesome – we have a lot of bird life here and apparently a blue tit chick can eat 100 caterpillars each day, butterflies are already quickly declining – if by doing my bit for conservation and getting nine out of ten pupae to emerge can help bolster the species numbers then I’ll do it. Plus, everyone needs a hobby and watching them complete their life cycle brings me such an extreme amount of joy I can’t really put it into words.

Anyway these rather funky little things are as I mentioned Painted ladies and there were twelve of them (at least I hope there were only twelve of them!). They’re so small to begin with that my camera really struggled to focus on them.

I’m totally fascinated with caterpillars in general, Painted lady cats are predominately black with white markings – although there was one that actually had a lot more white than the others (but I don’t think that makes any difference) Thankfully I’ve got thistles in the garden to release them onto as these guys are also known as the the Thistle butterfly.

To be clear though I’m only rescuing the ones I can identify as eggs as some caterpillars can be tricky to raise or are protected species. If I don’t trust that I can look after them properly and give them the right food plant/proper environment then my plan is to just leave them alone. I recently found 30 Orange tip eggs in the garden, but they’re cannibalistic so I thought it definitely best to let ‘em do their own thing. I’ve also got Large white caterpillars in the Wildspace but from experience those caterpillars are happiest on a food plant (as opposed to Small torts that don’t mind just being fed nettle leaves) and I don’t have cabbages growing indoors – but I’m hoping to be able to watch them for their whole lifecycle (and maybe create a post about it!).

When they begin to form the chrysalis the caterpillars climb to the top of the plant (or house) and hang by their back feet, curving their heads in to look like an abstract question mark, its a process that takes about a day.

Nine of them successfully finished their life cycles (not sure when the other three escaped) one or two were particularly big! They were in a bit of a hurry and were only pupae for about four days. They’re one of the types of butterfly that are happy to pose for photographs – although I wondered if that was maybe because I’d been around them for so long and they were used to me?? (I have no idea if their minds go that far).

In the butterfly house I like to put plants and try to recreate the outdoors as much as I can so I have a couple of big and bushy violet plants and I use mini milkshake bottles to add cut flowers from the garden (so they get used to the natural surround) and I even created a mini rock pool so they can drink water. I’ve also found that all butterflies like oranges so I make sure that there is always a slice in the house when they start emerging.

My general plan is to always release them three days after they emerge and I was thrilled to find that a pair had mated…never in my wildest dreams did I think that would happen!!! I was so excited that I went out in the garden in the dark and dug up a really leafy thistle so that she had a safe place to lay her eggs over night…I know the picture isn’t the greatest but I didn’t want to disturb them!

Fun fact – its more or less impossible to tell males from females (unless you catch em laying eggs of course!) and the females can lay up to 500 eggs in her lifespan of 4-ish weeks.

Its kinda mind boggling to think they spend longer as a caterpillar than they do as a butterfly.

The eggs themselves are tiny mint green dots (like mini hundreds and thousands) and I’m just not a good enough photographer to get a decent shot of them!

I actually ended up with two mating pairs and between them the two little females laid well over 150 eggs!!! I’ve had to go and get more thistle plants, hopefully a good amount of them will stay on the plants I’ve got them and I’ll be able to really boost their numbers this year…not bad for a plant that cost £13!

Weirdly I was super emotional when I let them go, they’ve been my housemates for six weeks or so from tiny caterpillars, and it seems really silly but I got way too attached to them.

Painted ladies are one of my most favourite butterflies, they really have wonderful wing patterns and thankfully weren’t in a rush to fly away, so I got a chance to get some photos of them.

Its really hard to tell male from female with Painted ladies but the romantic in me likes to think these were one of my two mated pairs as they flew off together.

By caring for, and releasing these lovely ladies (and gents) out into my Wildspace I’ve more or less doubled my butterfly total to 21!!

I really hope you enjoyed this little slice of fluttery goodness! I feel super privileged to have been able to raise and protect these chaps. Ever watched the life cycle of a butterfly? As always thank you so much for reading this post and have a great weekend!

Ps. I’m pretty sure that at 1100+ words this has been my longest post ever…do you think its too long, maybe I should’ve split it into two parts?! Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.