This monster was crawling across a tarmaced path in the village. It’s an Elephant Hawk Moth caterpillar, so called because the caterpillar has a trunk like proboscis. You can’t see it well here because when threatened it withdraws it’s head back into its body to enlarge those ‘eyes’ and scare away any predators. This one must have felt very threatened with our boys desperate to poke, squeeze and generally interfere with it. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so vociferous in getting them to hold off, because a few inquisitive fingers would give some scale to this really quite large caterpillar. What a great start to our walk.
Update: find out more about Elephant Hawkmoth caterpillars here.
We were heading for Woodwell although we were slightly held up on route by wayside feasting…
In the pond, the mint is in full flower…
…and buzzing with bees and hoverflies…
B and I also spotted a large metallic green dragonfly but it was gone before I managed to get a picture.
Normally at Woodwell the ankle-biters like to ‘fish’ in the pond with large sticks. On this occasion they were more interested in swapping their assorted plastic tat for other assorted plastic tat from the geocache, and then exploring the area at the base of the cliff, which is a shame since our friend R had found himself a suitable stick…
On the way home they entertained themselves by extracting imaginary tolls form us at every gateway. The price escalated us we progressed so that as we neared home we were expected to pay £20 each for the final kissing gate. And where there was no gate they became quite creative in their robbery…
Our tribe and their pal S
Beating The Bounds 
wow what an incredible photo of the elephant moth caterpillar. So jealous you saw that.
That’s one deeply ugly caterpillar you found Mark.
Hi Mark
Love the picture of the Caterpillar, never seen one
I’ve just found two of these lovely creatures on my fushia bush,had never seen or heard of them before… i am so delighted ..
Excellent – I hope that you get to see the moths too – they are perhaps even more stunning.
See one here (you’ll need to scroll down a bit there are several other moths first).
I searched under “3 inch catterpillar” and found your pics. I just had 4 of these on some fuschia bplats in containers by my front door 31.08.10, Sth B’ham and couldn’t imagine what they were. By this morning, 02.09.10 they’d gone. I was hoping I might see them dangling from somewhere, but no such joy.
Hi. Yes just seen one front doorstep. Massive!! West Sussex area.
ive just found two of these in my drive way cut little things
just found one in our back garden, thought it was a baby snake , until i took it to our local botanic gardens .
found one on our garden path at Holcombe somerset
just found this beautiful caterpillar in our garden,as weve seen the moth over the years
this is a memorable first.
[…] first time I saw, and photographed, one of these, was also on a walk with A. And her friend S and the Tower Captain come to that, way back in 2009. One of the photos I […]