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| You can see the snail's slime trail lower right. |
I took another look at the Nasturtiums yesterday. In fact I positioned a garden chair next to them so that I could have a proper look. Unlike the day before, there were no Small White caterpillars in sight, but there were a few snail trails. It was not long before I noticed the tiny snail in the photo above. Its shall was considerably smaller than my little fingernail.
I know incredibly little about snail identification. Certainly the spire was very flattened (a contradiction in terms, it seems to me!), which might suggest a species similar to Oxychilus cellarius, though the body is not the typical blue-grey.
There was also a cluster of yellow eggs, which I imagined would belong to the Small Whites ... I flipped the leaf over gently for a couple of photographs and let go afterwards.
... however, a bit of research showed that Small Whites lay single eggs. Large Whites lay clusters at the rate of four eggs a minute, so I think these are Large White butterfly eggs.
As I made my way back to the house, I noticed this Cranefly checking out (or perhaps 'checking in to') one of our insect hotels ...
... I'm not sure how well it would fit through the bamboo holes!
