Angle shades on Salix Caprea

It's not a coincidence that I recently went to visit the Botanical Garden of the City Prague and I saw many caterpillars (and butterflies) and that next day I came back home and discovered a green caterpillar on the balcony!

Some us make such long journeys that one cannot possibly fathom: full of endurance and difficulties, obstacles of all kinds, new faces, new sceneries, but also full of nice surprises.

Cannot even imagine what a journey this caterpillar has had and apparently overwintered as a larva on goat willow and no one noticed.

Next morning I went to buy some lettuce,

since we thought that for the caterpillar it wouldn't be enough just to feed on willow. I carefully spread some pieces of lettuce leaves on Salix,

but the caterpillar started eating at 6:41 PM.

Meanwhile I looked online for this exact caterpillar, not knowing the species.

Later on, that evening, we discovered from a reddit source that this particular exemplar is Angle shades.

After reading online that it feeds also on apple, but not on Salix, we carefully moved it with a toothpick on a Braeburn Columnar (we have 2 columnars, but Golden Delicious has fewer leaves than Braeburn). Later on, that same evening we checked to see how it was doing: one of the leaves was half eaten and Angle shades was already near another leaf, just sitting on a twig. Simply amazing how it wasn't going to finish the entire leaf and was already moving on, near another one, in order not to damage the entire plant!

Unfortunately Angle shades lasted on the Braeburn until next day, early morning; we kept on looking on every plant, but we never saw it again... a blackbird (or some of the other birds that live around in the neighbourhood) probably came and ate it. If it is so, this caterpillar's journey wasn't over yet, since it helped a baby blackbird to be stronger and survive.

Where: home, on the balcony;

When: Monday, June 3rd, 2019;

With: Nikon D5300 (40mm f/2.8G; ISO 160-400; 1/60s-1/500s- f4-8; 0EV).