a western tent caterpillar spring

Caterpillar with Lady's Mantle.

Caterpillar on Peony Bud.

Holy kamoley!  Two months since I've last been here and posted. yikes.

And since then, the caterpillars have eaten up all the alder tree leaves.  They have a voracious appetite and there are zillions of them. (literally) (no kidding)  They've taken over Mayne Island.

After they finished eating the tree, they came down to the ground and spread across the garden congregating on all of their favourite plants.

munch, munch, munch, munch, no kidding again, the air was full of the sound of them munching away, really!  You could hear it, seriously.  Nature is fascinating.

There was a story about these tiresome caterpillars on the 6 o'clock news last night. Check it out!

Earlier this year, I posted some photos of the egg masses.....well, this is what happens when the eggs hatch.  I don't even want to think about how many of these guys would have been hatching had I not removed hundreds of those egg masses!

Newly hatched, in April, on a black currant bush.

In May, we cut piles of the new tents off the fruit trees and put them in the fire pit.

If we left them to sit there overnight, they'd start creating new big tent colonies on the pile.  crazy.

We set them on fire.  poor things.

See that white spot on the end of this guy.  It's the egg of a parasitic wasp or a fly (not quite sure which one) but anyway, it lays it's egg on the caterpillar and then when it hatches it feeds on the caterpillar's insides and eventually kills it.  gross! But I'm cheering them on (the parasites, I mean!) Nature has it all worked out.

A couple of tents on this plum tree got away on us so almost all the leaves have been eaten up.  Look at all those baby plums!  I wonder if they'll all ripen up nicely for a harvest in August. 

I noticed today that all those little white cotton candy-like things in the plum tree are cocoons! 

 The caterpillars are working on becoming moths soon and that's a good thing I suppose, for now.....since it means they'll stop eating everything.

wow.

Lady's Mantle is one of my favourite accent and filler flowers at this time of year.  

I love it's chartreusy green colour and it's airy feel and it goes so well with so many things but the caterpillars like it too, it seems.....every year presents me with new and unexpected challenges and looks like one of this year's challenges is how to make beautiful wedding arrangements with flowers covered in caterpillars?...who woulda' thought?!

I managed to get some nice flowers happening for a wedding I worked on recently, but it took a lot of extra effort, let me tell ya!  

Looks like soon I'll be pulling cocoons of my flowers and foliage too because after I saw them on the plum tree, I started seeing them on all sorts of plants, all over the garden. 

 So does this mean they'll become moths and lay eggs again and come back next year too?? (!!!) 

I was hoping this was the end of the cycle for another few years but with all these cocoons all over everything, I'm having some doubts.  We shall see!

apple trees and caterpillars

The apple trees have received their seasonal pruning and the buds are swelling.  It's such a joy to behold the newly pruned shape of the apple trees.  

We're expecting a monumental caterpillar year on Mayne Island this year.  Everybody's talking about it.  It's cyclical.  Every 7 or 8 years the caterpillar population goes wild.   Dave (he does the pruning for me) was picking off lots of egg cases from the branches as he pruned.

The tent caterpillars around here love apple trees.  They also love the alders that grow outside the garden fence and surround the garden.  They love the cherry tree and the currant and gooseberry bushes too...roses too....sigh.....

I began my pest control efforts last summer, picking off the egg masses that had just recently been deposited by the moths.  The cases are so interesting.  Really!...like styrofoam on the outside.  Once you peel it off from the branch, you can see all the little round eggs on the inside that are just waiting for the following May and the sun's warmth so they can hatch and devour the tree leaves.

It's a satisfying feeling to peel those suckers off a branch.  I became slightly obsessed with collecting up big piles of egg masses.  lol.

It was summertime and so there were quite a few yellow jacket wasps around and it took them no time to find my collections....they were interested in dinner!  It was amazing to watch them chow down....(they actually started dragging pieces away from the pile!!)  wow.

This is what the egg mass looks like when on the branch in the summer time...looks like this one's on one of the jostaberry bushes.

Oh. oh.  This one got away on me last summer.  When an egg mass is left on the tree and the eggs hatch, this is what happens and it's best to remove the tent as soon as you see it....before the wrigglies get this big...yuck!

It's much easier to remove the eggs in the winter...no leaves and fruit on the tree to get in your way and the rainy season softens them so they come off the branch much easier.

They look quite different after the winter rains, you can really see all the little eggs on the outside....

This one looks like some of the eggs are gone...a little birdy has been feeding, perhaps?  I don't know, I wonder....

Anyway, I noticed that a few recent visitors to the garden (all who live on Mayne Island) didn't know about these caterpillar egg sacks....and were so interested to learn.  I remember how happy I was when I learned about them back when I first moved here so I hope this will be helpful to some.....it really is so much easier to take as many of these off now.  For me, the wielding of loppers while on ladder to cut tented branches is a garden misery so the fewer of those adventures I have, the better...

Dreaming of APPLES!  ....and hoping for a  good harvest this year!