Top Photo: Camouflage looper on right side of seed head. It’s time to start looking for camouflaged loopers. If you’re not familair with camouflaged loopers, they’re the small larvae of the small green moths in the family of moths known as Geometridae, geometrids or geometer moths. The adult moth of the camouflaged looper is called a wavy-lined emerald (Picture Here). These caterpillars (about 1/2” – 5/8”) are well known for covering themselves with the plant they feed on. The caterpillarRead more
Posts tagged: #looper
Potter Wasp
A hot, humid, and quiet day and a potter wasp has secured a looper caterpillar for its “pot” nest chamber. The wasp descended on the caterpillar as it was looping along the path in front of Into The Mist in Catch the Wind. I was lucky to be there when it happened. Potter wasps are solitary wasps, which means they nest alone, not in colonial gatherings as do some burrowing wasps or in collective hives as do yellowjackets, paper wasps, orRead more
Worms (caterpillars), Everywhere!
While walking along the paths and trails here at the Museum, you may have noticed tiny green, brown or even black, wiggly objects dangling down from the trees on silvery threads of silk. Indeed, you may have walked into a few of them, smack in the face. They seem to be everywhere. You may already be familiar with them, calling them inchworms, loopers, or cankerworms. You may even know that they are the caterpillars (larvae) of small unobtrusive brown moths.Read more
Snappers and Mergansers, and Migration Notes of Interest
At least one pair of snapping turtles have already been seen mating here at the Museum and, as we’ve observed in years past, one of the big Chelydrids was seen basking on a boulder in the middle of the Wetlands soon afterwards. The second half of March is typically the last we see of our visiting mergansers, although the latest that I’ve seen them here was April 10, which gives them about another week and a half in the area.Read more