Eye on Nature: Your notes and queries for Ethna Viney

When I moved the wheelie bin I found what looked like an albino woodlouse. I'm sending you a photograph.
Brian Finnegan
Templeogue, Dublin

It is a common woodlouse in the juvenile, or manca, phase. As it grows it will shed the white carapace and emerge as a dark-coloured woodlouse.

I photographed a peacock butterfly without eyespots, known as a blind peacock, which I saw on a patch of wild mint at Portnoo, Co Donegal, on August 31st.
Maurice Simms
Lifford, Co Donegal

The last report to Birdwatch Ireland of a blind peacock butterfly came from Glenties, Co Donegal, in 2006, not far from your sighting at Portnoo. Could it be a local aberration?

While digging my allotment I was conscious of a typical magpie commotion in the trees above my head. When I went to change my working shoes there was only one sandal where there should have ben two. I found the second one, at a distance, ripped and torn into pieces, the work of a magpie in a temper.
Frank Barton
Kilmacud, Co Dublin

We saw a huge caterpillar, about 6cm long, in the Lough Boora parklands recently.
Susan Iremonger and Róisín de Bhaldraithe
Westport, Co Mayo

It is the caterpillar of the goat moth, so called because it smells like a male goat. It has emerged from the trunk of a tree where it has been growing for three or four years. It will pupate on the ground, and the moth will emerge next June.

Ethna Viney welcomes observations and photographs at Thallabawn, Louisburgh, Co Mayo, F28 F978, or by email at viney@anu.ie. Please include a postal address