Burnet Cocoons

The grassy area at the top of the croft behind our house, running along the common grazings fence, is one of the best places to find six-spot burnet moths. Their flying months are July and August, but we've only seen one this year, and it was the one on Bheinn Bhuidhe above Portuairk - blog post here.

However, until now we'd never found what might be a burnet cocoon. Now we think we have, but....

....all was not well with some of the cocoons we found. The second one seemed to have collapsed, there being no sign of the hole out of which the moth emerges, while....

....I'm not at all sure what happened to this one.

A rather different cocoon was spotted by Mrs Diary recently at Sanna. While it's easy to find photos of the six-spot cocoon on Google, I couldn't find this one, and wonder whether it may be the cocoon of the rarer transparent burnet which is supposed to be found at Sanna.