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Category Archives: Cutworms and Owlet Caterpillars   rss

Robin feeds Caterpillar to Chicks

Fat green robin chow
Location:  Westford Massachusetts
October 10, 2010 6:07 pm
Hello Bugman… found you on a Google search for ”green caterpillar”. Great site!
I’m curious about the fat green ’pillar that turned into fast-growing robin feathers in my apple tree this summer. Tobacco worm? Luna moth? or ….??
Thank you!
Suzanne Niles
frognuts.com
Signature:  Suzanne Niles aka Frogshooter

robins caterpillar food chain suzanne 252x300 Robin feeds Caterpillar to Chicks

Robin feeds Caterpillar to Chicks

Dear Suzanne,
We can’t really make out what this caterpillar is for certain, but it does not look like a Hornworm or a Saturniid.  Our best guess is some species of Cutworm or other Owlet Caterpillar.  Even though we couldn’t be certain with your identification, we are in awe at this awesome photograph.

Hi Daniel,
Wow… thanks for the quick reply!  … and for the kind words about the photo.  So the delicacy will remain “The Fat Green Thing”.
I staked out this nest right outside my back door, about 10 feet away from the apple tree.  Trimmed a few twigs/leaves to clear a “window”, then sat on a stool with a tripod and my new fast camera set at two shots per second… and waited for feeding time, which was about every 10 minutes.  Guaranteed results!  Worms, bugs, and berries arrived, but this green thing took the beauty prize for meals-on-wings.
Thanks again!  Now I can stop Googling-for-greenies.
Suzanne

Posted 10 October 2010 § ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged:
What's That Bug? does not endorse extermination

FEATURE: Possibly Goldenrod Hooded Owlet Caterpillar

Who can it be now?
Location:  meadow garden, Outer Banks, North Carolina
October 2, 2010 1:28 pm
Bugman,
Found this interesting caterpillar eating my goldenrod flowers, Solidago canadensis. Can you identify, please?
Signature:  seedmoney

goldenrod caterpillar 300x193 FEATURE: Possibly Goldenrod Hooded Owlet Caterpillar

Might this be The Asteroid???

Dear seedmoney,
We believe this must be the highly variable Goldenrod Hooded Owlet Caterpillar, Cucullia asteroides, which we tentatively identified on BugGuide.  Perhaps it is just the angle of view of your photograph, but the head on your caterpillar looks very small compared to the heads of the Hooded Owlet Caterpillars posted to BugGuide.  BugGuide has no images of caterpillars of the Goldenrod Hooded Owlet with such minimal markings, and the pink and green color reminds us of ice cream indicating that it must be edible.  Perhaps David Gracer will provide a comment.

Also called The Asteroid, the Goldenrod Hooded Owlet Caterpillar just sent us off careening in another direction.  We are going to have to contact Dr. Krupp from the Griffith Observatory to get his take on a Caterpillar named for an astronomical body.  We are going to pitch a book collaboration with Dr. Krupp, a book called Insects and other Heavenly Bodies, and Daniel hopes Dr. Krupp might consider the proposal.  Daniel respects many people in the world, but few more than Dr. Krupp, the archeoastronomer who has been the Director of the Griffith Observatory since 1974 or 1796 or so.  He was the director during the 1990s when Lisa Anne Auerbach and Daniel were the photography staff at the Griffith Observatory and they self published The Casual Observer, the legendary notorious zine that is only available in the collections of two museums, The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City and the venerable and wildly popular Griffith Observatory, arguably the most historic structure and publicly recognizable landmark in the entire city of Los Angeles.  The Griffith Observatory has appeared in numerous movies, including Rebel Without A Cause, Earth Girls are Easy, The End of Violence, Devil in a Blue Dress, and the not so authorized Flesh Gordon (Disclaimer: This is a PG rated movie trailer to an adult themed film with comedic artistic merit).

goldenrod caterpillar 2 300x206 FEATURE: Possibly Goldenrod Hooded Owlet Caterpillar

Possibly Goldenrod Hooded Owlet Caterpillar

Posted 02 October 2010 § ‡ Comments (1) °

Hooded Owlet Moth Caterpillars

help identifying a caterpillar
Location:  Tse Bonito, NM 20 mi W of Gallup
August 24, 2010 8:47 pm
I’ve looked through several books and have searched every source I know of on the web. I hope you and staff can help me to identify this creature.
Cathy Vancik

cucullia cat new mexico cathy 251x300 Hooded Owlet Moth Caterpillars

Hooded Owlet Moth Caterpillar

Hi Cathy,
This is a beautiful caterpillar.  We found a match for your caterpillar on BugGuide, but alas, it is an unidentified Hooded Owlet Moth caterpillar in the genus Cucullia, and it is also from New Mexico.  The caterpillars feed on plants in the aster family, and this is supported by evidence in your photographs.  According to the genus information page on bugGuide:  “Larva: usually smooth (hairless) and very colorful, with mixed patterns of spots, stripes, and/or patches of mostly yellow, red, green, blue, and black – the range of variation between species is too complex to describe in general terms.“

cucullia cats new mexico cathy 247x300 Hooded Owlet Moth Caterpillars

Hooded Owlet Moth Caterpillars

Thank you so much for identifying the caterpillar for me.  I looked on the BugGuide but I guess I’m not familiar with the search capabilities enough to find it.  \
Thanks again!
Cathy

Posted 25 August 2010 § ‡ Comments (0) °
What's That Bug? does not endorse extermination

Unknown Caterpillar on Grape may be Eight Spotted Forrester

What Larvae is This?
June 10, 2010
I’d like to know what moth or butterfly caterpillar this is. It’s on a grape vine and is a little over an inch long.
Jayne Wilson
Houston area, Texas

caterpillar grape jayne 300x238 Unknown Caterpillar on Grape may be Eight Spotted Forrester

Probably Eight Spotted Forrester Caterpillar

Hi Jayne,
We know we have seen images of this Moth Caterpillar in the past, but we cannot recall what it is.  It superficially resembles the caterpillars of the Grape Leaf Skeletonizers in the genus Harrisina pictured on BugGuide, but that is not a correct identification.  We are going to post your photo and letter and we hope that our readership can assist in the identification.  Though your photograph is quite lovely the way you have composed it, we cropped it to more closely concentrate on the caterpillar.

Thanks for the response, Daniel. I’ll check back to see if anyone has more info.
Jayne

Karl provides some information
Hi Daniel and Jayne:
This caterpillar probably looks familiar to you because it looks similar to several that have been posted on WTB before. It looks a lot like a Fruit-Piercing Moth (Noctuidae) in the genus Gonodonta, but all the white hairs on the body suggest it is likely another Noctuid, a day-flying Forester Moth in the genus Alypia. Many of these moth caterpillars look quite similar and the head and tail regions are not visible in Jayne’s photo, but I think it is likely an Eight-Spotted Forester (Alypia octomaculata), previously posted by Laura in 2007. You can use the WTB search function to also find numerous images of adults. There are many good caterpillar images on the internet, like this one on pbase. Eight-Spotted Forester caterpillars feed on grapes and Virginia Creeper. I can’t say for certain that that is the genus, but that I am pretty sure that Alypia is the correct genus. Regards.
Karl

Now I’ve had a chance to look at photos of the moth — I think I can confirm that it is an Eight Spotted Forester.  I remember seeing what I took to be a black butterfly with white spots on the Star Jasmine a month or so back.  It looked exactly like the photos I found online.
Thanks, Jayne

Jayne provides photos of imago Eight Spotted Forrester
June 11, 2010
I’m attaching some photos that I took at the end of May that I thought were of butterflies.  Now I know they were Eight-Spotted Forester Moths.
Thanks for posting my original caterpillar photo, and to Karl for providing more information.
Jayne Wilson

eight spotted forrester jayne 300x268 Unknown Caterpillar on Grape may be Eight Spotted Forrester

Eight Spotted Forrester

Posted 11 June 2010 § Owlet Moths ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Unknown Hornworm from Korea is Underwing Caterpillar

Korean Mystery Caterpillar
May 31, 2010
Dear Bugman (men/women),
I’m a kindergarten teacher in Seoul, South Korea. My walk to work every morning takes me down a mountain (part of the range that drops down into Northern Seoul) and I make it a habit to photograph and (when possible) pick up interesting things for my students on the way. We already have a garden snail in a terrarium in our classroom and he’s been a great success. Just this morning (May 31st) I was walking down the hill as usual and nearly smushed something green. I stopped and found a caterpillar on the road. He’s – hang on, let me measure him – three centimeters long, a beautiful bright green, with a yellow-white lateral stripe on each side, and a white stripe down his back. He has tiny white spots all over except along the lateral lines, where the dots are white inside with a ring of black surrounding. He has a single posterior horn that looks more like a rose thorn than a long thin antler; the horn has white stripes running up to the tip (one following the dorsal st ripe and two on either side for a total of six). He’s got two legs under the horn, then a eight in the middle, and what seem to be six smaller ones under his face. He’s soft and velvety to the touch and completely harmless.
I sure hope that’s a detailed enough description for you. I’d like to keep him in the classroom throughout his metamorphosis if I possibly can, but first of all I have to figure out what kind of plants he likes to eat – so far he’s not been interested in the local greenery I’ve plucked (lilac leaves, leaves from the azaleas that are all over the place, some random other stuff). What IS this little guy? Is he going to do well in a terrarium? And by some miracle, do you know what he’d like to eat?
Thanks a bunch!
Miss Sandra and the Yellow Canary classroom
Bukan-san mountain region, Seoul, South Korea

hornworm korea sandra 300x178 Unknown Hornworm from Korea is Underwing Caterpillar

Copper Underwing Caterpillar

Dear Miss Sandra,
First, we want to say that you sound like a wonderful teacher and that your class is fortunate that you have taken the initiative to teach your charges about the natural world.  Alas, we have struggled unsuccessfully to identify your Hornworm in the family Sphingidae in an effort to identify the food plant.  Hornworms are the caterpillars of Sphinx Moths or Hawkmoths.  They generally pupate underground, and it is possible that this caterpillar left its food plant to search for a good location to dig.  Providing some loose soil in the bottom of the terrariam may encourage him to dig underground to pupate.  Make sure the soil is not too wet nor too dry.  We have been searching the Sphingidae of the Eastern Palaearctic website, China section, in an attempt to identify the species, but China is a big country with many potential species.  Some moths pictured do not have images of caterpillars, and with some species, the life cycles and early stages are unknown.  Hopefully, one of our readers will be able to identify your species so that you can provide the necessary food.  The horn on your specimen is very unusual looking and should be able to provide a unique characteristic for identification purposes.

hornworm korea sandy 2 300x194 Unknown Hornworm from Korea is Underwing Caterpillar

Copper Underwing Caterpillar

Correction thanks to Karl:  Underwing Caterpillar
June 1, 2010
Hi Daniel and Miss Sandra:
The unusual “horn” is actually more of a hump, and this caterpillar is an underwing moth (Noctuidae) not a hornworm (Sphingidae). It looks like a Copper Underwing (Amphipyra pyramidae) – other common names include Humped Green Fruitworm and Pyramidal Green Fruitworm. It’s a Palearctic species with a very wide distribution, including all of Europe and across central Eurasia to Korea and Japan, and the higher altitude regions of from North Africa to the northern Indian subcontinent. It appears to be present across North America as well but I suspect it has been introduced to that continent. There is an abundance of images on the internet (additional links below). A related species, A. perflua, has a similar distribution, including Korea, but I wasn’t able to find any images for comparison.
http://www.pbase.com/spjaffe/image/113128207
http://www.leps.it/indexjs.htm?SpeciesPages/AmphiPyram.htm
Karl

Dear Karl and Daniel,
Thank you so much for your information and assistance!  We had a great time in class looking at pictures of what our little friend will turn into.  We would have loved to watch his metamorphosis, but as we couldn’t entice him to enjoy any of our plant offerings, we let him go in our garden in the hopes that he would find his own way to something delicious.  You were all incredibly helpful – never have there been a group of five year olds so in love with bugs as my students, let me tell you.  I’ll be sure to take pictures of any copper underwings I run across!
Thanks again!
Sandra

Posted 31 May 2010 § ‡ Comments (0) °

Ilia Underwing Caterpillar

Caterpillar found by oak tree
May 30, 2010
The of this caterpillar I took when I found it on my drivway which has large oaks on either side of it. I can not find its piture in any of my insect books.
Bill L.
Kennebunk, ME

ilia underwing bill 300x138 Ilia Underwing Caterpillar

Ilia Underwing Caterpillar

Dear Bill,
We do believe we matched your caterpillar to an Ilia Underwing, Catocala ilia, on Bugguide.  It too was found on Oak.  BugGuide indicates:  “very occasionally spectacular lichen mimics are encountered.” Your caterpillar is one of the lichen mimics.  The species is also known as The Wife or The Beloved Underwing.

Dear Daniel, Thanks so much for your answer. I have never seen such perfect camouflage.
Bill

Posted 30 May 2010 § ‡ Comments (0) °

Double Mystery: Possibly Underwing Caterpillar with Parasitic Fly Larvae

What insects are on this caterpillar?
April 27, 2010
I saw this caterpillar holding onto a cedar beam of the arbor above my deck. I’m curious if the insects piled up on this caterpillar are parasites or progeny. Could they be a symbiotic species??
Don
Austin, Texas, USA

underwing cat passengers don 300x199 Double Mystery: Possibly Underwing Caterpillar with Parasitic Fly Larvae

Underwing Caterpillar with Parasitic Fly Larvae

Dear Don,
This double mystery is one of the most unusual submissions we have ever received, but we have a couple of guesses and a theory.  The caterpillar looks like an Underwing Caterpillar in the genus Catocala, and they are well represented on BugGuide.  If not an Underwing Caterpillar, perhaps a related species like a Black Witch Caterpillar, also pictured on Bugguide. The hitch-hikers are definitely not progeny, and they are not acting like parasites, though parasites might be a possibility.  The passengers look like fly larvae to us, possibly Syrphid Fly Larvae, though the behavior is most unusual.  Might we fathom a crazy guess and suppose that the fly larvae are taking advantage of the mobility of the caterpillar to transport the larvae to a food source?  This behavior is known as phoresy, and it is common in the world of arthropods.  We would really love a professional opinion on this phenomenon.  We will contact Eric Eaton and our friends at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County for assistance.

underwing cat passengers 2 don 300x213 Double Mystery: Possibly Underwing Caterpillar with Parasitic Fly Larvae

Underwing Caterpillar with Parasitic Fly Larvae

Awesome.  I thank you very much for your obvious passion.
My brother and I have been inquisitive about nature since we hatched.  He and I both marvel at the macro world that most don’t take the time to uncover.  Now that film and processing is so cheap (digital photography ) we try never to waste a photo op in this world that gives us back aches to expose.
Now that I have discovered your site, I will take advantage of your expertise, in situations whose mysteries evade my browsing abilities.
Heartfelt thanks for your help,
Don Soderberg
South Mountain Reptiles

Eric Eaton provides a partial identification
Hi, Daniel:
Ok, I’m not sure of the identity of the caterpillar, but the other larvae are erupting from inside of it.  They are most likely larvae of a braconid wasp (family Braconidae).  That synchronous emergence, from one exit hole in the host, is not uncommon.  They will spin cocoons in a mass, too.
Eric
P.S.  Might I have permission to blog about this, using those two images?

Hi Eric,
What’s That Bug? would grant you permission to use anything since we know it will be for educational purposes.  We hope Don agrees.

No problem using the pix.
Wish I’d stuck them into a container that would have been suitable for all this to unfold.  I’m sure I would have gotten the temps and humidity wrong, so . . . oh well.

Brian Brown thinks they look like Fly Larvae
April 29, 2010
They look like fly larvae to me. I asked Mike Sharkey, a braconid expert, to look at this, and he said “They do not look like bracs or any Hym to me. With the sharp posteriors they look like dips to me. Very interesting.”
They don’t look like syrphid larvae; more like phorids, the group I work on. Many are parasitoids. Did Don collect any specimens or try to rear these out?
Brian Brown
LACM Entomology

Thanks Brian,
We will write back to Don to see if he kept specimens.

4

Posted 28 April 2010 § Parasitic Hymenopterans ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged: ,

Underwing Caterpillar

Grey knobby, hairless caterpillar found in GA mountains
April 25, 2010
Hello. My children found this caterpillar one evening after dark in the north GA mountains. It is about 1.5 to 2 inches long, and as big around as a pencil at its widest point. Any idea what this guy is, and or what he will become?
Thank you so much
North GA mountains

underwing caterpillar pam 300x221 Underwing Caterpillar

Underwing Caterpillar

We are confident that this the the caterpillar of an Underwing Moth in the genus Catocala, and you may compare your photo to an image from North Carolina posted on BugGuide.  Underwing Moths get their names because they are masters of camouflage with upper wings that allow the moth to blend into the bark of a tree when it alights.  The underwings are often brightly marked with red and orange stripes, and when the moth is flying, it is rather flashy, but upon alighting, the bright colors are hidden and the predator easily overlooks the resting moth.

Thank you so much!  My kids will be thrilled to know what it is!
Mandy

Posted 26 April 2010 § ‡ Comments (0) °

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