Can anyone identify these caterpillars please?

[tone]

Hi, I'll be completely honest and admit that I've only really signed up to the forum to pick the brains of any friendly users here in an effort to identify the following:

It happened all of a sudden about a month ago. I live on the SW coast of England and many hundreds of these little chaps 'decided' to leave my Golden Willow (Salix alba vitellina), after munching it half to death, then covering most things in their path as they proceeded to climb the exterior walls of my house. The pic shows my bycycle handle grip.

To be fair, I'm not cross with them, the tree survived, but I'm really curious as to who these ferocious eaters were, as I've never actually seen so many of any caterpillar on a munching mission of unity in my garden!

Thanks in advance for any ideas, I've tried searching online, but without success, and I'm hoping someone here will go "Ah, I know what they are!" If anyone thinks I'm being a bit cheeky, I apologise in advance, but this forum seems to be my last hope ;D

[bluemoth]

They are most likely Sawfly larva, Tenthredinidae. Easy to cunfuse larva for moth caterpillars. An easy way to tell the larva apart from moth larva is that they often curl up thier tail ends while feeding.

[tone]

Oct 25, 2011 13:13:19 GMT -8 bluemoth said:

They are most likely Sawfly larva, Tenthredinidae. Easy to cunfuse larva for moth caterpillars. An easy way to tell the larva apart from moth larva is that they often curl up thier tail ends while feeding.

Thank you so much bluemoth, I've now had a bit of a read up/look at Tenthredinidae larvae, and it appears they could well be the little critters I had the pleasure of sharing my garden with

Again, apologies for just joining the forums with a request, but very grateful for the quick response, and after popping my head into a few topics here so far, this seems to be a nice and interesting place on the net I hope I'll be able to offer something back to.

Although I'm not a collector or photographer, I do love looking at the macro world of insects (and plants), so I'm quite pleased to have stumbled across this site, and I hope to learn a lot from some of the clearly more knowledgeable people here.