Bedfordshire Garden - Scarlet Tiger Moth Caterpillars

On 30 June 2016 I posted photographs of a Scarlett Tiger Moth on my house wall.  Included in the blog was a poor photo of its caterpillar taken some weeks earlier.

 

With the recent exceptional hot weather looking at small town garden, I noticed 3 similar caterpillars feeding on 'Forget Me Not', giving me an opportunity to get some decent photos off this beautiful caterpillar.  Hopefully they will survive to become beautiful moths.

Bedfordshire - Scarlet Tiger Moth

This yellow, black & white caterpillar was spotted in a Lavender Bush in the second week of May and I quickly took a photo with my pocket camera which turned out to be poor.  I went back the next day to take a better photo, but it had disappeared.  I failed to identify the species from the photo and forgot about it.

 

 

Then two days ago, to my surprise, I came across this beautiful Scarlet Tiger Moth sitting on the brick wall adjacent to the Lavender.  Checking photos of moths and their caterpillars on-line, I am pretty certain that the lost caterpillar became this wonderful moth.

 

Not wishing to disturb the moth, I did not get to properly photograph the bright red lower wings, a small flash can just be glimpsed in my photo.