Back in August last year I went to visit an old friend who lives in Manchester and we ended up talking about a childhood enthusiasm that I had for keeping caterpillars. When I came down for breakfast the next morning, there was a jam jar on the kitchen table with a hairy black caterpillar in it, which my friend had found in her garden that morning and captured for me. So I put some soil, leaves and twigs in the jar to make him more comfortable and then took him home on the train with me.

Just a couple of days later the caterpillar turned into a chrysalis and burried himself under the soil. Then for months the jam jar just sat on top of the mantelpiece in the sitting room with nothing happening. So it was exciting to wake up this morning and see a beautiful moth had hatched from the chrysalis and climbed onto the wall of the jar.

Back in August I had tried to identifiy the caterpillar. Knowing that hairy caterpillars are usually moths I used the UK Moths website and had thought that it must be a Clouded Buff. However it was obvious from first glance this morning that I must have got it wrong, as the Clouded Buff has red and orange colours and this moth was white with dalmation-like black spots.

Going back to the UK Moths website I was able to identify him as a White Ermine (Spilosoma Lubricipeda) which is apparently widely distributed and fairly common in much of Britiain. But according to the website he shouldn’t have hatched until May or June, so I’m not sure how well he’s going to get on in cold wet February.

As I got him out of the jar this morning and he fell out upside down; I noticed that he has an amazing bright yellow back.