Readers' observations on nature
My 11-year-old son found a bright yellow/green caterpillar, with pale hair, dark spots and a pink spike on its rear, on the leaf of a horse chestnut tree. He put it in a container with the leaf which is now wrapped around the caterpillar. Is it hibernating?
Caroline Bonham, Castlepollard, Co Westmeath
It is the caterpillar of a pale tussock moth which feeds on deciduous trees. It spins a cocoon and goes into hibernation now and will emerge as a moth next May.
Strolling along a beach in Co Donegal, I came across a curious creature reminiscent of bagpipes. There was a ball of fawn foam about two inches in diameter with 12 tube-like greenish limbs and bivalve shell feet from which extended tiny red cilia.
Máire McKay, Tullamore, Co Offaly
It was a colony of buoy barnacles (Dosima fascicularis) fastened to the float which they had extruded.
We have a large bush with white flowers like ice cream cones. It attracted up to 36 butterflies at a time.
Colm Faughnan, Letterkenny, Co Donegal
It is white buddleia, known as the butterfly bush.