This is the first one I spotted, on the side of the sweet potato enclosure. The plant is what I know as potato weed, and seemed uneaten. The caterpillar is about 8-10cm long and a handsome matte black.
Returning from town about an hour later I spotted this guy, marching determinedly up our driveway from the wall facing the street. One of our cats was interested, but kept her distance.
20 minutes later, another, just as determinedly marching up the driveway, heading towards the compost heap and week old pile of leaves - I tracked these two for about 20 metres going to pretty much the same place. I don't know where the first one went, but there was no direct route for it to the compost heap.
Presumably decomposing vegetation produces carbon dioxide, which, being heavier than air, would drift down hill and thereby attract attentive caterpillars to its source?
There may have been more caterpillars, but I had other things to do. Couldn't work out what they had been eating in the vicinity of my Pecan nut trees (unharmed) and Cape honeysuckle hedge. Although there's lots of leaf litter in the hedge.
According to Google, these are apparently caterpillars of Bunaea alcinoe. I've seen these moths before in the garden, but can't remember what time of the year. They're big, and striking.
Update 2016/10/15:
Sorting out mulch around the edges of the garden, and digging it in to one of the asparagus beds revealed a few of these guys:
One quite deep in the sandy mulch covered soil of the asparagus bed, the other lying on the surface at the margin of our upper hedge.
Presumably larvae of the above caterpillars? They look almost as if they're injection moulded plastic - not that heavy/dense. The spike on the end is quite sharp. Is it used by the larva to burrow?
That's 7 months. Let's see if I can spot the moths when they come out.
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