Promoted
Sphinx pinastri - Teneral pupa gaining colour
Found the caterpillar below in prepupa state (clearly ready to become a pupa) unprotected on the ground under a pine tree:
Decided to take it home and give it shelter until next spring. Upon arriving at home it had already moulted to a fresh pupa, probably an hour or so earlier, so I documented the rest of the process of the colour turning brown from 18:00h to 14:00h the next day.
Update (June 12th 2022): Sometime in the last week (2nd week of June 2022) the glorious moth finally emerged, healthy and well. Obviously, for some reason it had decided to "skip" a year - a phenomena known from more species of moths and beetles etc. We had been checking on it regularly and keeping its make shift home somewhat moist and it would always greet us by wiggling its tail a little, letting us know it was still alive and kicking. Last check was about a week before finding the emerged moth.
''Sphinx pinastri'', the pine hawk-moth, is a moth of the family Sphingidae. It is found in Palearctic realm and sometimes the Nearctic realm. This species has been found in Scotland but is usually found in England. The species was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1758 10th edition of ''Systema Naturae''.
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