Caterpillars Galore

Hi Mom! This is not going to be your favorite blog post ever! Sorry! Maybe you should read it on your tablet instead of your computer....

My mom doesn't like caterpillars. And that's mostly what you're going to see here today, because I decided at the beginning of my bug walk that I was going to take a picture of every caterpillar I found, and that's a lot of caterpillars. I didn't find much else, either, so this is going to be mostly caterpillars.

We'll start with Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

 Streaked dagger moth caterpillar.

 I don't know why it is arched like that, but I kept finding it in that pose.

Now for the other caterpillars. This is probably not going to be interesting on an individual photo level, but more when you take them all in as a whole. I am disappointed in the lack of variety, but it is a pretty good representation of what I see every day in my backyard lately. I saw a white marked tussock moth caterpillar yesterday that I didn't find today, though a few weeks ago they were everywhere. I am disappointed in the lack of loopers to be found on goldenrod, as I usually find a lot of them this time of year. Ditto for brown hooded owlet moth caterpillars; I usually find a few on goldenrod around this time, but I haven't seen any in a while–though, oddly, I did see more of them at times during the summer. What I found were: White hickory tussock moth caterpillars, banded tussock moth caterpillars, woolly bear caterpillars, fall webworm caterpillars, and one nest of ailanthus webworm caterpillars. Aside from the latter, I found them all over the backyard (I'll identify each species at least once):

Fall webworm

 White hickory tussock moth caterpillar

 This woolly bear (aka Isabella tiger moth caterpillar) has been in the exact same spot for days. I am not even sure it is still alive. It appears to be shedding hairs.

That brings me to another subject, one that I have occasionally photographed, but not posted, and that is that I have found a LOT of dead caterpillars this summer. Sometimes I will see a caterpillar resting on a plant one day, and the next day it is in the same place, but obviously dead. Sometimes they have lost all their fuzz, or dried out, or just turned weird, but it has happened with a variety of species. My guess would be that they are victims of fungus, like the one that kills the gypsy moths if the weather is wet enough. Supposedly that particular fungus only kills gypsy moth caterpillars, but I know that there are other fungi that kill caterpillars, and my guess would be that is what it happening, perhaps due to the incredibly wet summer we had.

Okay, back to the more cheerful subject of caterpillars that are alive:

 Banded tussock moth caterpillar

 You can see the spiracles on the side of this woolly bear–I am not sure I have ever seen a woolly bear's spiracles before. Those are the dots along the length of its body–it breathes through holes in those dots.

 There's a cocoon there, but I can't tell if there's something else in it, or is this something this caterpillar built and is going to go in there to pupate. I see these white hickory tussock moth caterpillars in great numbers every year about this time, but I know nothing about how they pupate. They just sort of disappear usually, and I never know where they've gone.

 These are the ailanthus webworm caterpillars. You can see that there are also chrysalides in the web, and it looks like the one on the lower right is getting ready to pupate.

And that's every caterpillar I saw today. Now keeping with the larval theme of the day, Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

Can you see it?

Sawfly larva. I don't think I have seen this species before. I have seen some that look similar, but this color combination is a new one for me.

And as for other sawfly larvae:

 I have never seen this before. I have always wondered what happens when the sawflies finish eating leaves, how they disperse; it has always been a case where I see them on a plant every day and then one day they are suddenly all gone. Today I found them all up and down this tree trunk...

... with a few still on the leaves, or what remains of them...

 They have destroyed the leaves on this tree and a few others.

I didn't see a lot of other, non-caterpillar insects today, and the ferocious wind made it impossible to get good pictures in a lot of cases, but here's what was there:

 Female scorpion fly

 Winter firefly

 Ichneumon moth of some kind

 This is one of the most amusing ways to find insects; seeing their silhouette on a leaf.

 Here's what it looked like from the other side.

 I only saw one grasshopper today. Up until now walking through the rock garden was like walking in a popcorn popper, with grasshoppers popping up every which way, but today there was only one.

 Most of the bees I saw were quite busy feeding on goldenrod, but this one took a break on a rock.

 Stinkbug nymph

 Aphids

 A couple of ladybeetles, and if you look closely, you can see the aphids they are there to feed on.

 Candy striped leaf hopper

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 Common house spider wrapping up a cuckoo wasp, which was still struggling.

 

The herpetological lesson of the week (week as in 7 consecutive days, not period of Sunday through Saturday) is that snakes are not quite the ground-dwellers that I have always generally assumed. Backyard Reptile of the Day:
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This snake (garter or ribbon, I can't tell them apart) was on top of a thicket of vines, about two or three feet off the ground. This is the second species of snake I have seen in the last couple of days.