Southern Marsh Orchids

Southern Marsh Orchids

Saturday 1 March 2014

Ichneumon

While busy with some DIY, today, I noticed something crawling on the inside of the window and was surprised to find this lovely creature. I believe it is Ichneumon suspiciosus. I've seen them out and about in the summer, but didn't realise they hibernate as adults. I potted this one and released it to its fate outside.

Ichneumon suspiciosus (unless someone knows better)

2 comments:

  1. I saw quite a few of these last summer/autumn. They seem to spend a lot of time and energy crawling and flying through vegetation. From memory they are often parasitic upon noctuid caterpillars, so presumably they were looking for their next victim to consign to a rather gruesome fate!

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  2. Yes, I've seen them in summer too and this one was behaving just like that. It would't keep still for a moment and it was only because I used flash that I was able to get a reasonably sharp photo of it.

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