I hope that regular visitors of this website have noticed, that I’ve been photographing caterpillars for a longer period now. The intention is to eventually build up a database of any significance. It is a subject that not many photographers are up to doing and where still is much to discover. Complete works are for example not available yet, but there are a few people imagined hard working on one. On the Internet, some forums are active and where many images are brought together. The Dutch Butterfly Conservation is one of them, but that image file is still far from complete.
The ease of this issue is that you won’t have to go far away from home. In each green strip of any scale you can find a number of instances throughout the year. And when on your own balcony, the vegetables overshoot, you’ll find to your amazement feeding lines one day. Figuring out what kind of caterpillars it concerns is another story, especially since many species are active only during the night. And especially in a young stage, many species of caterpillar are ” transparent ” green without any recognizable details. The appearance often changes drastically after the successive molts.
That the vegetable named Broccoli was very popular, shows that besides a dozen Cabbage Moth, also the Small White did found the plants. Pity was that despite some preparatory work, the larvae before pupation have sought refuge elsewhere. Time to build up a suitable incubator.
My activities in the ecological green also contribute to collect new species. And because colleagues are now aware of my ” strange hobby ”, it often happens that I’ve been called to take a look at a find. A little help is always welcome in such a difficult topic.
