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NORWICH: Oak Eggar caterpillar

2nd August 2015

Whilst we were out on Sunday Cathy received a call from her parents to say they had found a large hairy caterpillar in the garden. From the description I suspected that it might be a Drinker moth, but we asked them to keep it until we got back from Heigham Holmes. When we called in it became apparent that it wasn't a Drinker caterpillar, something I see fairly regularly, but in fact an Oak Eggar caterpillar, something I've only seen once before. Not only that, it was a huge one, quite probably longer than most of the hawk moth caterpillars that I've seen before. I tried to get it to walk past a ruler, but it wouldn't play ball and kept climbing on the ruler. Nonetheless it gives an idea of how big it was. It was only when I wondered about the lack of a big oak tree nearby when I found out that they don't actually eat Oak, and are named because the cocoon looks a bit like an acorn.




2 comments:

  1. What a monster! Must admit I would probably have dismissed this as a drinker so thanks for the info. I was also going to help out at Heigham over the weekend, but domestic duties won the day. Shame because otherwise we could have had a chat. Enjoying the insect safaris and I have been trying to record some of what I see in my own garden. Hope to post some pics soon. There are bound to be many insects I cannot identify, so any help you can provide would be most welcome. Cheers.

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    1. I'm sure we'll bump into each other at some point! Yes I'm happy to help try to identify any insects that you aren't sure about. I have found some of my caterpillar photos and put together an impromptu blog post which may be useful to others finding similar caterpillars over the summer.

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