Unusual Sighting Beside Eton Land
Don’t Urbanise the Downs supporter Hannah Deacon is a helper at Earth Guardians, an after-school nature connection club in East Chiltington. The children meet each Monday for games, crafts and to investigate and experience the wonderful nature in our beautiful countryside. In this blog, she explains what happened on a Monday in July when the children were on bug hunt – and found the caterpillar of a once-extinct moth.
We had been finding all kinds of wonderful creatures in the beautiful fields in East Chiltington. We’d been looking at the difference between grasshoppers and crickets and had found some impressive spiders. We had entered some woodland when Rosie, the older sister of Jenny de Vial, one of our Earth Guardians, spotted a large grey stripey caterpillar crossing the path ahead of us. All the children were interested in their new find so we stopped to have a good look. Obviously not that keen on our attention, the caterpillar flipped on its back and revealed a white fluffy belly with black spots and an impressive looking face. We were standing under some tall Poplar trees and we realised that the caterpillar's underside was very similar to the Poplar seeds that were also on the ground - it was a brilliant camouflage. We watched it for a while and then the children left the caterpillar in peace and we went on our way searching for new amazing creatures to discover.
I had never seen a caterpillar like that and I couldn't find it in my guides or with a quick google search. The caterpillar very probably would have remained unidentified if it wasn't for a chance meeting with Chris Chapman. Chris is a local wildlife enthusiast and a committee member of the Plumpton and East Chiltington Wildlife Group. Chris took it on himself to identify our grey caterpillar with assistance from Steve Ogden from Wildlife Insight. It turned out to be very special - we had found the caterpillar of the moth Clifden Nonpareil (Catocala fraxini) or more commonly known as the 'Blue Underwing'.
The Blue Underwing is a large and beautiful moth with an impressive wingspan of about 10cm. It was the Victorian collector's classic all-time favourite. It was believed to have gone extinct as a breeding species in this country around the 1960s and for many years was only recorded as an occasional migrant. However, in recent years there have been more sightings of the moth. The children's find of the caterpillar is further evidence that it is breeding in the south of England again – there were 100 recorded sightings in Sussex last year. Colin Pratt, Sussex Moth expert, verified the identification and confirmed that we were lucky to see this magnificent caterpillar. So well done Earth Guardians and Chris - and yet another reason to protect our beautiful countryside.
Marc Munier, Don’t Urbanise the Downs lead commented: “It is brilliant that the Earth Guardians made this find – they are the very children we want to protect the Eton land from development for. It has a plethora of rare and endangered wildlife that live in its green fields, ancient hedgerows, trees, woodlands and waterways – including bats, amphibians, barn owls and an unusual sea trout. But this rare discovery adds even more weight to our campaign to prevent a new town being built on this unspoilt piece of countryside. We hope that this caterpillar makes it into an adult Blue Underwing moth and that its species and others like it continue to thrive here, rather than be driven to extinction once again by the destruction of one of our few remaining truly rural green spaces.”
