Topic: Snake!!!

[Twoflower]

The girls found this on the allotment this morning and thought it was a snake. Can anyone tell us what it is and what it eats? as i've never seen one before and we can find it in our wildlife books 

[Twoflower]

This second one is a bit blurry but you can see it's tail better

[ceres]

It's an elephant hawkmoth caterpillar.  Great find!

http://ukmoths.org.uk/show.php?id=240

[Twoflower]

oh wow it's pink the girl's will love it, we have a butterfly tent in the backroom and it's in there at the moment.

[Digeroo]

Lovely could do with something eating rose bay willow herb, bit of a monster weed in the garden.

[cheerfulness]

Thanks for that link. I've now worked out what the lovely moth was we found outside our backdoor recently.  ;D
Sadly it was dead  but it makes sense after reading about them as it was near my honeysuckle arch.

[Toadspawn]

Quite often when you find these hawk moth catterpillars crawling around, they are getting ready to pupate. Therefore I suggest that you put it in a container half filled with dry multi purpose compost. You will probably find that the caterpillar 'disappears' but after about a week you can look in the compost and find the pupa. Put it back into the compost and put the container in a cool dry place. Eventually, probably in the spring, the moth will emerge.   

[Sinbad7]

What a little beauty, you lucky thing.

Hope to see the end result in the spring  :)

[angle shades]

 :) jealous!!/ shades x

[Twoflower]

It did pupate, do i have to what until spring for it to hatch, if so where do i keep it? At the moment it's in a butterfly tent out of the sun in my back room.