Day 7: Going pink

Day 7: although they seem to be in the more or less same instar now, one caterpillar is pinker than the other, which is more grey. The grey one is also larger.
When viewed from the left, they both seem to have the letter "C" on their cheek.

"C" for "Caterpillar" maybe? :D

Larger caterpillar

Smaller caterpillar

Smaller caterpillar

Larger caterpillar

Smaller caterpillar

They both seem pretty happy munching away on nettle leaves and pooping like little poop machines.

Day 5: Difference in development speed?

Day 5: apparently these two caterpillars are not developing at the same speed?

One seems to be in its second instar, the other one not.

Left: 2nd instar caterpillar, right: 1st instar caterpillar

Day 1: The babies!

September 23rd - here come the caterpillars!

So now we have babies, what do we feed them? Moth caterpillars are very particular about what they eat. Most species eat only one or two specific plants, otherwise - they die.

But I don't know which moth laid these eggs!
Well, if Mniotype Satura overwinters as an egg, then it's probably not this one.
Xestia might have hatched but I have no idea what plant to feed it.
If it's Abrostola, it will eat nettles. Almost all Abrostolas eat nettles.

So I went out and found a nettle and voilla! They liked it!

In this video the caterpillar is 3 days old.

I guess they are Abrostolas then, if they eat nettles?

Day 0: The mother

This story begins on September 17th 2014. A moth flew into my house, and promptly got crippled by my cat. I rescued it from the beast's claws and placed it in a safe place - my moth tank (which I normally use for photographing moths).

The moth tank. And, The Cat.

The poor moth lost one forewing in the battle, and the other one was so battered it was difficult to tell its species precisely, other than that it most certainly belongs to the Abrostola genus.

There are many moths in the Abrostola family, and the most likely ones to appear here in Croatia are Abrostola agnorista, triplasia and tripartita. They are very hard to tell apart just by the looks, and even more so when they look like this:

So I'm going to be calling this moth just - Abrostola.

Over the next few days two other moths were temporarily housed in the tank. During this time, some eggs appeared on a leaf.

Now who laid those eggs??

Was it the Mniotype satura? According to some sources, they overwinter as eggs, so they shouldn't be hatching soon.

Maybe Xestia cohaesa?
Very little info is available online for these. But according to Wikipedia, the Xestia genus moths overwinter as larvae.

Abrostolas overwinter as pupa.

Oookay.

Freshly deposited eggs

A one day old, unhatched egg

A hatched egg