Bordered Straw caterpillars

As temperatures were supposed to be more normal today, Pete and Chris headed north to Leverton on The Wash, to continue their survey of the Sea Banks, while I headed south to Houghton to finish a set of grassland quadrats. Although it only reached the mid-twenties, it was substantially more humid than yesterday's dry, searing heat, and I found it quite tiring, even though I was home in time for lunch.

Pete brought a couple of interesting finds back from his survey visit. A rather straggly looking horsetail turned out to be Variegated Horsetail, which has never previously been recorded in Lincolnshire. It was growing in a relatively recent borrow pit created as part of a project to raise and strengthen the sea bank.

His second find was these caterpillars, which appear to be caterpillars of Bordered Straw which is a migrant species, which varies in numbers from year to year, with large numbers in some years and absent in others. In a good migration year, larvae are often recorded, especially in southern coastal districts. At Leverton, they were locally frequent on Sea-purslane, but they will eat a variety of plants including Pot Marigolds.