As I walked along the path a small brown lumpy thing caught my eye on a blade of grass.
I was surprised when I looked closer, it was a larva!
Furthermore they clung to the grass with five pairs of prolegs. An Owlet Moth (Noctuidae)!
So tiny at only 12mm!
This definitely needed investigating!
There was no doubt that it was The Wedgeling (Galgula partita)! The mystery was…why was it on a grass blade? The host plant is supposed to be Oxalis species. It seemed much too small to have wondered off to pupate.
Well, not wanting to raise them, I set it free. They immediately started to chow down on the Oxalis I set them on. And I wished them good luck!
The moral of the story check those lumps. You never know what wonderful creatures you will find!
The pipevine cats down here were very hard to track to their food. Our Aristolochia erecta looks like a blade of grass in ways. But they will leave their host plant to take a rest on upright stalks of other plants. So we would find the cat but the plant wouldn’t make sense. Maybe yours was also “resting” between meals?
Wow! What a cool cat! Nice of you to deliver them to their supper.
Super article on bat vision- and it explained how they is figured out.
That’s a funny looking cat. Thanks for finding it a host plant
😊
The pipevine cats down here were very hard to track to their food. Our Aristolochia erecta looks like a blade of grass in ways. But they will leave their host plant to take a rest on upright stalks of other plants. So we would find the cat but the plant wouldn’t make sense. Maybe yours was also “resting” between meals?
That makes sense to me, the resting. Thanks!
That story makes me nervous about walking on the grass! I’ve probably crunched many things unintentionally with my big flat feet.
I think about that too. 😊
Fascinating looking cat