Eden Wild Goose Nature
Nature notes from the Focus Magazine September 2022

Peacocks

Last week I was walking along the road from Burnrigg to Broadwath. The hedgerow was full of the usual mid to later summer vegetation, including many vigorous stinging nettles. On one leaf I noticed some thirty or forty black and bristly caterpillars, munching away and quite happy by the looks of things, though no doubt their survival is challenged on a regular basis, since they were easy to spot and presumably rich pickings for some hungry bird. Now I confess that I’m not great when it comes to squirmy, wormy type creatures, so I looked, noted, had a bit of an ‘euugh’ moment and walked past rapidly.
 
Once home, a bit of internet research soon revealed that these were the caterpillars of our familiar peacock butterfly, whose eggs had been deposited on the caterpillars’ food source of choice, the common nettle. I can only presume they have some mechanism that prevents them from being stung?
 
I had often read that some of our most common butterflies such as peacocks, small tortoise shell and commas favour nettles as a place to lay their eggs, and that is frequently given as a reason why we should be happy to leave nettle patches in our gardens. Being aware of this, I’ve often felt a bit bad, rooting out nettles- but then we do have loads of them, so I feel able to relieve my conscience on at least this environmental choice. The strange thing is that it’s the first time I remember seeing these particular caterpillars. They must be common, as there are lots of peacock butterflies, so it merely reminds me how limited my observation of the world around me is. It turns out that the female lays her eggs, up to five hundred of them, very low on the plant, on the underleaf, so not so easy to spot Once hatched, the caterpillars move higher up the plant to somewhere warmer and sunnier.
 
Hopefully, the little black, squirmy guys I saw will soon rest up a while as Chrysalides and emerge in August into something much more glorious. They will feast on our buddleias and other nectar rich flowers before hibernating for winter, and with good luck and a fair wind, emerge again in Spring to carry on the cycle, a common, complex everyday marvel.

Philippa Skinner