www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

Can someone help to identify these, please

Thanks. Alex

This looks like a glow worm larva to me (see http://www.kendall-bioresearch.co.uk/lamp.htm) and a Peacock butterfly larva.

Cheers,

- Pete

Alex ,cant help with first one, but I am sure the other is a Peacock....maybe.. just a guess.
Cheers IAC

Thanks Pete and IAC. I was reasonably sure about the peacock but was thrown by the fact that there were so many of them on one nettle plant - probably thirty caterpillars. But that other creature baffled me completely until I checked your link, Pete.
Cheers. Alex

Top one is definitely a glow-worm... I found one in the forest of Dean a couple of years ago and brought it home in a matchbox (illegally, unknowingly at the time!). I kept him in a big spaghetti jar and fed him on little snails from the garden until he pupated, whereby I released him into a site in East Yorks that has them. He brightened up my bedroom every night. I miss you, Glowy

Isn't it only the females that glow? I understand they stop after they have mated.

Glowy was a girl.

Guy

Dagnammit! And I kitted her jar in blue and bought her action men! I hope the other glow-worms didn't tease her for wearing "comfortable shoes"... folk can be cruel up here!