A puffin stuffin’ itself with sand eels. Readers’ nature queries

Robert Hackett sent in this lovely picture of a puffin with sand eels, taken earlier this year on Great Saltee island off Wexford.

Please can you identify this insect? I live beside Girley Bog in Co Meath and have been walking there for about 20 years. Recently I’ve seen the same insect a number of times and I have no idea what it is. It is absolutely huge. Patrick Kelly

You are right — it is huge for an Irish caterpillar. This is the larva of the goat moth, so-called because it smells like a testosterone-filled billy goat. This caterpillar feeds for three years in the wood of willow or ash trees. It then emerges and scuttles around looking for somewhere suitable such as rotten wood, where it can make a chrysalis and pupate into an adult moth. It will overwinter in this cocoon and emerge as an adult in the spring.

I found this little lizard in an abandoned tent on the Featherbeds. I’ve seen them there in the past, under pieces of corrugated iron. Is it unusual to find them at this altitude? Will it breakfast on the caterpillar? D O’Donovan, Dublin

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This is an excellent picture of a viviparous lizard — our only native lizard — showing the five toes on the front legs. (Similarly shaped newts have only four toes on the front legs.) Its habitat does include upland heaths, where it basks on rocks, as well as sandy coastal areas. And, yes, caterpillars do feature in its diet.

I spotted this moth in the garden. It was on the wall for several days. What is it? Edward Shaw, Dublin

It is a common marbled carpet moth — not that it eats carpets or anything. Its green caterpillars, which crawl with a looping movement, feed on the leaves of a variety of garden plants and shrubs. It is indeed very common.

I found this strange creature lurking at the bottom of my postbox. Is it an albino earwig? Joe Fenwick, Galway

It is a female earwig — not an albino, however, but one that has just recently moulted.

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