Large White - Pieris brassicae

Two summers ago our kids occupied themselves one day by collecting caterpillars from some nasturtiums growing outside our neighbour's house and bringing them into our garden to eat our nasturtiums!

They turned out to be the caterpillars of Large White butterflies, Pieris brassicae. Over the next few days they grew bigger ...

... until our nasturtiums had almost all been eaten! Then one day I noticed a couple of caterpillars climbing up the walls of the house.

When they reached a sheltered spot they shed their skin and then started to fatten up. If you look carefully, there is a length of silk around the second segment from the right holding the caterpillar to the wall.

Within an hour or so, they were looking more like a chrysalis.

And this is what they looked like a couple of days later. This was the end of September and the chrysalises remained there all winter. One day the next spring I checked and discovered that the chrysalises had all emerged and I had missed the butterflies!

This is what the adult butterflies would have looked like.