Caterpillars

August and September are good months for finding caterpillars, they're coming into the mature stage and fattening up for winter, either overwintering in their present state or more often going into cocoon. I spotted some red-humped oakworm caterpillars on the side of the laneway on a small oak tree (* my guidebook says they're almost identical to the white-headed prominent but even the expert writing the book has difficulty separating the two, so for the sake of ease I'll refer to these as oakworm.)

Caterpillars are far too often overlooked, many of our species can be quite beautiful, sporting bright colours and lovely patterns.

Among my favourites are the tussock moth caterpillars, like this hickory tussock. They're like soft furry little teddy bears, silky to the touch, not spiky and in some cases stinging like the io moth caterpillar. I grabbed an io caterpillar once by mistake when picking up some leaves, the tips of my fingers were numb for a couple of days.

Couple others that I've found and have had time to photograph are this green and yellow striped black arches moth, and an orange with black headed caterpillar found on red oak, as yet unidentified. Looking at the pic of the orange caterpillar I'm seeing the "stitchery" of some critter that glued leaves together with web, I've been meaning to investigate that further, haven't gotten around to that yet.