While walking with friends on Falcarragh Beach, Co Donegal, we came upon this Manx shearwater (?) at the water’s edge. It was alert, but remained in the same spot, presumably owing to its lack of mobility on land? Why might it have ended up in such a vulnerable location in broad daylight? If it was carried out by the tide. Did it have a good chance of survival? Fionnuala Meagher & Bernard Murray
This is a guillemot in winter/nonbreeding plumage. It is definitely in some kind of difficulty. It could be bird flu, or it could have become exhausted or had difficulty feeding due to the recent storm activity. It might survive after a rest – unless it has bird flu.
I found this large caterpillar climbing up a wall in my aunty’s garden in Dundalk. Hugh Holland
This is the caterpillar of the heart and dart moth – Agrotis exclamationis, so called because of two dark marks on the forewings, one like a heart and the other like a dart. The caterpillar is one of a group of caterpillar species called cutworms. This is because they attack garden plants, cutting the stem at ground level and leaving slugs to take the blame. It overwinters as a caterpillar.
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I live in a rural area in Swords, Co Dublin, and recently I have noticed these poo-like droppings in my garden and also in my mum’s garden next door. In all my years living here I have never seen this before. I tried looking for an app identifier but to no avail. Claire O’Connor, Swords
Glad you asked a real person. This is not poo at all but a living “thing” – a slime mould. It grows from spores and rejoices in the name “Dog vomit slime” – Mucilago crustacea. It spreads over grass and other vegetation, covering them as it goes. It “feeds”, as it were, on particles of organic matter just as the more stationary fungi or mushrooms do. It will convert into black spore-bearing structures and then blow away.
Any idea what this handsome chap is called? Pat Molloy, Dalkey
Brian Pope found a similar one in a wood near Killaloe. It is the forest shield bug, which has orange legs and curved shoulders as defining characteristics.
My willow tree was completely covered in hundreds of what looked like a type of caterpillar. I asked ChatGPT and it seems they were willow sawfly larvae ... and they can strip a whole tree of foliage in a matter of days. Their life cycle is to eat their fill of leaves, lay their eggs (which I think are the tiny black dots on the left of the picture), then drop off the tree, burrow into the soil, make a cocoon and later emerge as a type of wasp. The idea of thousands of wasps emerging from the ground sent my children running, but the smell brought them back as the larvae smelled surprisingly sweet and nice. Oran Kennedy, Dublin
Here is the true story. These are birch sawfly larvae – Nematus septentrionalis – which, despite their name, can and do feed on willow trees too. Sawflies belong to the same major group as bees and wasps, but they have no wasp-waist and no sting. Adult females have a sawlike ovipositor with which they cut a slit in plants and lay their pale eggs inside. The larval stage does look like a moth caterpillar, but these only ever have five pairs of fleshy abdominal legs – sawflies have six pairs or more. The black dots are their droppings, technically called frass. The odour is described by others as rather pungent.
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