Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Caterpillar season

It's caterpillar time again! I found the usual gulf fritillaries on my passion vines and have discovered some caterpillars that are new to me - tomato hornworms:

Three of them were working on decimating my scant bell pepper plants. I never got around to googling them until today and I only did that because, upon checking their status this morning, I discovered 2 were gone and the 3rd was forming a cocoon so I figured I better find out what is it.




At 11:30am, tomato hornworm was doing this. Kinda looks like in Men in Black II where the alien takes over the guy's body & the skin doesn't fit right, heheh.

I got all excited & thought I'd be in for a chance to watch the transformation up close, it's hard to time these things right so I usually miss them.
When I checked on the caterpillar at 1pm sadly the hornworm's typical enemy, the wasp, had found it and eaten most of it. Perhaps that is what happened to the other 2 caterpillars as well...... A shame, the hummingbird moths are so beautiful. Anyway, it is always interesting to witness part of the cycle of nature.

No comments: