On 2013-09-01 11:03:18 +0000, David Rance said:

In message , Jake
writes

On Sun, 1 Sep 2013 11:26:41 +0100, David Rance
wrote:

I noticed a day or two ago that an oak sapling in my garden was looking
a bit threadbare. This morning I had a good look. The leaves at the top
had been eaten away and, round the trunk a little lower down, were a
couple of dozen caterpillars all huddled together. They were yellow and
black striped, rather like a wasp (which is what I thought they were at
a distance!) and about an inch and a half long.

My wife said that they were the processionary caterpillar but when I
googled for them all that came up was the pine processionary caterpillar
which seemed quite different in colour. Anyway we took the precaution of
not handling them (there are severe warnings about what their hairs can
do) and knocked them off into a shovel and put them on our bonfire.

I didn't think to take a photo of them before we destroyed them.

Try this link for info about the Oak Processionary Moth/Caterpillars.
Now's a bit late for their caterpillars I think.

http://www.forestry.gov.uk/oakprocessionarymoth

Thanks for that, Jake. I think that the photos of the processionary
moth show it to be much hairier than ours (I *do* wish now I'd taken a
photo!) and, yes, it does seem to be a bit late for it. But then it's
been a topsy-turvy summer. However the caterpillars commonly mistaken
for the processionary moth still didn't look quite like ours.

David

Any news of the big and beautiful caterpillar that was on your potato patch?
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon