I am pleased that some of you are managing to see some butterflies. My spare time and any decent weather haven't coincided for the last few days.
I have been keeping an eye on some Peacock caterpillars in two spots on my evening dog walk for the last couple of weeks. There was one patch of about 50 larger caterpillars and in a different place there were three batches of slightly smaller caterpillars amounting to at least 200 caterpillars.
Last Thursday I cut some nettles and put them into a jam jar of water and collected three of the larger caterpillars, which I put into a net cage I have.
The following day the caterpillars had all started to attach themselves to the nettles.

- P1150007 - Copy.JPG (148.88 KiB) Viewed 17271 times
On Friday they were all hanging down and I was a little worried as the weather was wet and rainy.

- P1150018 - Copy.JPG (133.74 KiB) Viewed 17271 times
I put some polythene over the cage to try to stop them getting too wet, but they remained like that for the next 24 hours. Then on Sunday when I looked in the cage I was delighted to see three chrysalises hanging from the nettles.

- P1150052 - Copy.JPG (153.75 KiB) Viewed 17271 times

- P1150057 - Copy.JPG (144.98 KiB) Viewed 17271 times
One of them has a dark patch on it, which I don't know if it's normal. It twitched yesterday when I picked up the jar to take a picture, so it appears to still be alive.
I kept an eye on the batches of caterpillars over the rainy weekend. They slowly descended from the nettles and hung around near the base of the plants during the worst of the rain. Unfortunately, this evening I couldn't find any caterpillars at all, so I don't know if they have perished. I really hope not. I will be keeping a close eye in the area to check for adults over the next few weeks.