I was feeling very pleased that at last the local magpie moth(s) had found our ragwort plants (senecio erucifolius I think) - after saving them from hubby's well meant efforts to prevent lots of self-seeding in the veg garden. The few caterpillars I found I promptly brought indoors to safety, and they are now pupae under crumpled kitchen paper in a cat. castle. I've kept an eye out for more on the outdoor plants, but so far there are none that I can see.
However, while weeding in a completely different part of the garden I discovered a couple of magpie moth caterpillars on the leaves of an overgrown, bolted and blue-flowering (great nectar!)chicory plant that was humming with bees. I keep looking as there are several chicory plants, but haven't found any more yet. But I'm wondering if this is usual for them to feed on chicory - I know it's another in the Compositae family, but not as near in family to its usual plants as I'd have expected. Maybe we need to widen our searches to other Compositae plants when we're looking for magpie moth cats.
