It’s near the end of June. Below (and above) are photos of some of the creatures I’ve seen during the month. They’re arranged in no particular order. The top photo is of one of the milkweeds, butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa). It attracts many insects to it’s flowers, leaves, and seed pods throughout the summer season. Here, you can see new flower buds on the left and older flowers to the right. Some insects go out of their way to attractRead more
Posts tagged: #caterpillar
Datana in the Birch
It’s caterpillar time. Although you can see caterpillars munching and crawling about the landscape from March to October, now is the time when you’ll encounter more of them in both numbers of individuals and diversity of species. Daily, people approach me with smartphone images, or even live caterpillars in their hands, asking “what is this?” Sometimes I know what it is, other times I don’t. Fortunately, if I don’t immediately recognize what it is they hold in their hands or haveRead more
Sand, Dust, Florescence, and Waxy Larvae
A hole in the sand. That’s what I was looking at, a hole in the sand. Ranger Ian had spotted a bee or wasp hovering around and entering a 1/2” hole near the “sandbox” in Gateway Park. I was there to put a name on the bee or wasp and to help determine if the nest would put any children in harm’s way. It’s a large sandbox where kids use mini backhoes to fill up Tonka trucks with sand andRead more
Idle Thoughts?
As we humans hustle through our days occupying our thoughts with whatever it is we think about during our daily routines, a particular project we’re working on, what to eat for lunch, or whether to go to the mountains or to the beach the coming weekend, we unknowingly pass by a myriad of creatures sharing our world whose thoughts, if they have them, are far less abstract and more consequential to life itself. What creatures? Stop and have a lookRead more
Green Stripes
Alerted by the frass at my feet, I looked up into the maple tree branches over my head. It didn’t take me long to locate the source of the frass. Two green-striped mapleworms. Frass is caterpillar poop. If you enjoy finding caterpillars it’d be wise to keep an eye out for frass. If there’s frass on the ground, there’ll be a caterpillar, or a group of caterpillars, feeding above. Green-striped mapleworms are the caterpillars, or larvae, of rosy maple moths.Read more
A Sphinx Moth
I don’t know what made me look up, pure curiosity I suspect. As I craned my neck upward, a large green caterpillar caught my eye. It was about twelve feet up on the underside of a small twig of an elm tree. It was the end of the day, closing time, and I was walking the boardwalk in Explore the Wild for the final time. Although I couldn’t put a name on it, I immediately recognized the caterpillar. I’d seenRead more
The Dagger
On Wednesday of last week (6/3), I spotted a not quite 2” caterpillar trekking across the macadam of our outdoor loop trail through Catch the Wind and Explore the Wild. The caterpillar had a black head, yellow-green body, black markings on its sides and a whitish mid dorsal stripe, which included a series of eight “warts,” three of which were more prominent than the others. It was moderately covered with white setae (hairs) with the setae on the thorax longer andRead more
Caterpillar Time
It’s that time of year again when caterpillars seem to be everywhere. Oh sure, caterpillars can be seen from spring till late fall, sometimes in huge numbers. How can you forget those cankerworms that dangled on silky threads from every tree branch by the thousands, no millions, last April. No, what I’m talking about is the huge variety of species that can be viewed at this time of year. Both moth and butterfly species have been busy all summer producing youngRead more
Tent Caterpillars
There are two species of moth, among others, which are active now in the form of larvae or caterpillars. They are similar in name and seasonality. They are communal. And, they are both tent caterpillars. The one above, as labeled, is an eastern tent caterpillar (Malacosoma americanum). The other, is a forest tent caterpillar (Malacosoma disstria). These are the hairy caterpillars we humans most often see crawling across sidewalks, driveways, and everywhere else in spring, after having consumed all orRead more