Excitement

I received an excited call from my mom, so I took the camera and went across the street.

There she was sitting in front of her fuchsia with a shovel and there was something moving in the shovel: It was the largest caterpillar (ca. 8 cm) I've ever seen, and a funny looking one, too!
Look at the cute little horn!

Caterpillar is in "snake" pose.
I saw it in "elephant" pose and now know where the name comes from.

I took dozens of pictures and later we inspected the fuchsia to find a whole caterpillar family! My mom had already noticed little peaces of poop around the fuchsia in the morning, but had no idea which animal could have produced it.

The fuchsia still looks pretty healthy and to keep it that way we carefully removed all the caterpillars from the plant and I set them out across the street in the church yard.

At home I found out that its the caterpillar of the elephant hawkmoth (Deilephila elepenor).
I blipped the small elephant hawkmoth (Deilephila porcellus) before, but this caterpillar looks like its the larger moth.

I read in my book that the elephant hawkmoths caterpillar is mostly found on fuchsia in gardens, so I think they might find their way back across the street tonight... we'll see tomorrow!



4:40 pm 18°C