. I saw, recently, the biggest caterpillar I have ever seen. It was surely three inches long, with light brown hairs and dark brown body, with white flecks down both sides. It had eight sections in its body with dark brown or black dividing lines. It was feeding on a briar leaf. I could actually hear it munching off sections of the leaf. What was it?
I once saw a strange little creature on Bull Island. As it scurried across our path I thought it was a very large humble bee, but on a closer look the tiny creature seemed to be made up of a brown fuzzy body and a longish, thin tail - I wondered was it a shrew?
Theresa Doran, Clontarf, Dublin 3
The first was the caterpillar of the oak eggar, a fairly large moth of which the female is half coloured and the male is a richer brown. There are two subspecies of this moth, a southern and a northern. The northern species Lasiocampa quercus callunae, is the one commonly found in Ireland and is officially recorded; the caterpillars feed on heather and bilberries. Yours seem to be the southern species, Lasiocampa quercus quercus, whose caterpillars feed on oak, hawthorn and bramble. It is not recorded.for this country in the Irish Macrolepidoptera. Your tiny creature was a pygmy shrew, our smallest mammal.
. Do wasps use their nests for just one season? When winter comes have they gone for good?
P. Byrne, Claycarthy Road, Dublin 5
Only the queen wasp hibernates in the ground and survives the winter. The others die around October. In springs the queen emerges and begins a new nest the new workers will enlarge.