We found this larva of a pale tussock moth crawling along the parapet of Prebends bridge, across the river Wear, in Durham.
Everything about it
warned ‘don’t touch me’. It would present a challenge for most
insectivorous birds, although cuckoos, with a gizzard that can cope with
irritating hairs, sometimes eat them. Those deterrents inflict discomfort on
tender human flesh too; finely barbed and filled with irritating fluid, they
can cause dermatitis. Calliteara pudibunda was once a notorious pest of hop
fields, which might explain naturalist Gilbert White’s journal entry for
October 8th. 1781, noting that ‘ …women and children have eruptions
on their hands ….after they have been employed in hop picking’. More
recently, families from London’s East End, travelling to Kent for traditional
hop picking work every autumn, would have been painfully familiar with these caterpillars, that they knew as ‘hop dogs’.
Pale tussock larvae are not picky about food plants and defoliate at least a dozen broadleaved tree
species, including beech, hawthorn, sycamore and lime, all well represented
along this riverbank. But, out of curiosity, I offered our captive some young
shoots from the hop vine that twines through our garden fence. It had a nibble
but was fully fed and only interested in finding somewhere dry and secure
amongst the leaf litter, where it will pupate inside a cocoon woven from
recycled defensive bristles.
Hatched from an egg
laid last June, this wanderer - provided it hasn’t already been parasitised by
an ichneumon wasp - should survive winter, metamorphosing as a beautiful pale
grey moth next spring.
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