I got the answer from my garden centre (I emailed them the same pic). Apparently it`s not a caterpillar at all...it`s the larval stage of a lady bug.....that`s awesome, because I have a lot of aphids and I don`t want to use anything because I want to encourage the butterflies.

Any ideas on the butterfly?

Congrats on the lady bug and the question mark!

Sherry

Hi, GreenThumb, welcome to the Butterfly Forum. We have a lot of Question Mark butterflies this year and I love them!

If you will look at one with the wings close, you will most likely see a couple of white marks that suggest a question mark, hence, the common name for these lovely leps. Question Marks generally don't feed on flowers, but rather rotting fruit, tree sap, dung, etc. I put out very ripe, black, bananas for them in a suet feeder and they feed all day on this diet.

With a rotting fruit feeder (you can also use fruit cups with lots of cherries) you can attract other fruit feeding butterflies, too, like Red Admirals, Mourning Cloaks, Red Spotted Purples, maybe Lorquin's Admirals in your area.

Have fun watching the butterflies!

Susan