Hey friends! Welcome to my third Butterfly tale of 2026!!

Do you remember last year I wrote about my experience over wintering 3 Emperor moth cocoons I found in the garden? They emerged mated like crazy and flew away, well this year I’m continuing that story…

So my three Emperors from last year were a richly coloured male and two gigantic grey winged females, I really fell in love with them and was thrilled that they survived the winter (I found them on a plant that was damaged during a winter storm) I created them an enclosure with different heathers and a giant meadow sweet plant and they were obviously quite happy as the girls laid like 250-300 eggs!

Sadly Emperor moth eggs need really specific humidity and temperatures to develop and although I was hopeful only a single egg hatched. I was gutted to be honest I kinda thought I was going to be releasing an army of them.

Just to point out my butterfly raising disclaimer, 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 always to just leave them alone.

So my very precious caterpillar began to eat her way around the enclosure. These moths have fascinating caterpillar, each time the caterpillar grows or ‘moults’ a stage in life where they rest for a few days and shed their skin causes significant changes in their appearance.

These are the first three stages, getting progressively bigger from left to right. I think stage 2 is very pretty!

The final caterpillar stage is magnificent! She was about three inches long and bright green – my very own hungry caterpillar ate two small heather plants and near enough a third of the meadowsweet plant. We had one or two close calls were I was concerned she might die, but she just kept eating, so I named her Hardy.

I’m well aware you shouldn’t get attached to them, but its really hard not to.

After a few months of almost continuous eating Hardy finally decided to pupate amongst the fallen heather flowers at the bottom of the enclosure and I left her there sleeping for the rest of the year. I didn’t photograph her cocoon but this is what they look like!

Her egg was laid on the 3rd of April 2025 and she finally emerged as a fully grown moth of the 8th of April 2026. I literally spent an entire year caring for a single moth. Obviously I didn’t know she was going to be a girl, isn’t she fluffy! (If you click on either of the photos above it will take you to my insta to see her taking off!)

She was really pink, which wasn’t expecting! I thought I’d add photos of ‘mum and dad’ to show the variations in colour between the two generations.

The Emperor moth (Saturnia Pavonia) is the UK’s only silk moth and builds an amazing hairy cocoon to pupate inside. The females can have a wingspan of up to around 10cm, while the males are slightly smaller at 6-ish cm. Sadly this family of moths don’t feed in their adult form and only live a few short weeks.

Interestingly the females release pheromones that can attract a males from up to seven miles away!!

I was also able to get a photo of her underwing which isn’t an angle I’ve seen before.

If I’m being honest while release days are always my favourite, I was actually really sad to see her fly away – I genuinely thought she’d be too fat to fly but she took off like a jet and flew over the meadow, hopefully she found mate and laid a ton of eggs!

Anyway I really hope you enjoyed this little slice of mothy goodness!

As always thank you so much for reading this post and have a great week!