Final Savernake Tally

This year's tally of autumn larvae found in/ around Savernake Forest is 21.  This is the same as last year's (poor) tally, but is better than I'd feared as the survey season ended relatively strongly yesterday.  My sincere thanks to Mark Tutton for helping.

Most larvae were found in two hot spot areas. Several favoured breeding areas were unsuitable this year because of severe tree hopper damage to foliage during June and / or serious squirrel damage to bark.  

Yesterday we found that two larvae had probably gone into hibernation (their feeding sprays had yellowed or fallen), though we couldn't actually find them - they may have travelled >3m.  I'll look again when all the leaves are off.

Two of the six larvae we saw yesterday were about 50% coloured up, prior to hibernation, three of the other four were starting to colour up, but one was still in full Lincoln green. 

Here's a green one hiding in a leaf tip drip - 

And here's one who will have to go off into hibernation very soon (though it will have sealed its leaf on to the twig stem with silk) -