Hundreds of caterpillars

Bertie and I were enjoying a peaceful walk in the sunshine this morning when I happened to notice a caterpillar crawling over a ragwort plant. I stopped to take a closer look and noticed that there were several caterpillars on the plant. Then I looked at the neighbouring ragwort and saw more of these little black and gold wrigglers. Incredibly, every ragwort that I looked at after that (and there were a lot of them) had these wee beasties crawling over some part of them (extra). There must have been hundreds of caterpillars, if not thousands, and they were eating both the leaves and the flowers.
On investigation back at home, I discovered that these are the caterpillars of the beautiful red and black Cinnabar Moth and their numbers bode well for the numbers of Cinnabar Moths in this area next year.
This article https://sussexwildlifetrust.org.uk/news/cinnabar-caterpillars is very interesting if anyone wants to find out more about these caterpillars and their diet of Ragwort.
Tonight, my hands are feeling a bit tender after battling the prickles of the gooseberry bushes but it was worth it as there are now lots of gooseberries joining the blackcurrants in the freezer.