Wiltshire Wood - Part 2

This stuff is addictive - as evidenced by others that have succumbed to iris and I can see myself making several trips over the autumn and winter to check up on progress! And my first return visit was today; I just had to go back to see whether or not that egg had hatched and, indeed, it had! And so welcome to the world, Egbert (I needed something to remind me that I found him as an egg!). When I found him he had eaten all of his eggshell and had moved to an adjacent leaf and was spinning up a silk pad. By the time I'd left he'd finished and had turned himself around to face the base of the leaf.

What I didn't realise is that the larvae will sit on the edge of a curled leaf and out of sight - something I hadn't been checking. And so I thought "this must be a good tree since Egbert's mum selected it" and almost immediately found another larva - this time a 2nd instar larva with horns, and clearly the result of a different set of parents given the difference in age. I've christened this chap "Blackadder" for no other reason that I wanted to christen the first larva I found yesterday "Baldrick" since he's missing his "horns" and is therefore "bald". Anyway - something that will help me remember what stage/instar I found these guys in! Almost all Blackadder characters