I was standing in front of a tall patch of nettles, moving from side to side, searching intently through the plant stems, hoping to find the chrysalis of one of the fat Peacock butterfly caterpillars I’d seen munching here just a few days previously (didn’t) when I spotted this black-and-white ‘thing’. It looked almost like a blob of poop but, when I edged cautiously closer (those bl**dy nettles sting!), I could see that it looked a bit furry. At home, some careful googling quickly turned up an identification – it’s the pupa of an Ichneumon wasp, which may well have parasitized one of those lovely fat caterpillars I had been admiring.