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' thoracic legs near the head, and lacks the fat gripping prolegs and claspers towards the tail end, which moth and butterfly caterpillars use to grip the leaf.Despite textbook assurances that the insect is quite common and widespread, this is only the first

it does not flit from flower to flower like a butterfly. But it flies readily if disturbed from its not-very-camouflaged position on a leaf, wall, fence, window, car, no-parking sign, bollard or brightly coloured plastic bin full of winter salt/grit mix

easily have been in part of the Weald. But the wildlife reflected its slightly more southerly location, the Departement Mayenne between Normandy and the Loire.There were plenty of painted lady and clouded yellow butterflies, the speckled woods were

, tingling limbs, nausea and vomiting if combined with alcohol, even after two or three days. I gave up alcohol a couple of years ago, and I'd try them now, but I've not seen the ink caps recently.The last few Septembers have been glorious for butterflies

, not much helped by examination of dictionaries or spell-checkers. Originally there were hover-flies, snipe-flies, house-flies and blow-flies, which were all flies, and dragonflies and butterflies which were not. Now the hoverfly people use one word along

tiny) garden.The garden isn't perfect and I've a long way to go, but I've documented my success by the variety of garden visitors I've gained since the transformation: blue tits and great tits, bumblebees, butterflies, moths, slugs, snails and leaf

appeared in my garden soon after I converted it from a paved courtyard last year. It's not large enough and doesn't get enough sun to sustain breeding butterflies (most of which require large swathes of nettles in full sun to lay eggs), so I can munch away

of the weekend, as there are talks and demonstrations on all of my favorite subjects, including organic herbs and planting, garden wildlife, bees, butterflies and nature-friendly garden designs, all hosted by Katie Johnson and James Alexander-Sinclair, who has a

size, and are perhaps even more artificial than any distinctions between moth and butterfly.One of my favourites is the twenty-plume moth, Alucita hexadactyla (pictured above). Although in a different family from the other plumes, it has the same

ready for the council to come and collect. On some of the leaves were ladybird pupae, while spiders spun new webs in the wreckage. There may also have been chrysalises of the holly blue butterfly, whose caterpillars feed on ivy in summer. They