T.C.s moth and butterfly thread.

Since spring is pretty much here, and during spring and summer I collect a lot of moths and butter flies, I am going to make this thread dedicated to all the caterpillars I catch from both. We are getting a way early spring, and I managed to find this guy yesterday.

Banded Wooly Bear caterpillar ( Pyrrharctia isabella).

I found another one and put them in this jar. I am hoping they make their cocoons in those tubes I made them. For a lot of my moths I use these. It's a 50/50 shot they will use these. I have had them use them several times before and it's very handy when they do. It provides good visibility, I can move them, and often if they make their cocoon in the grass I will get mold issues and have trouble removing it from the grass and sticks it attached its cocoon too.

Here in MA, we find those Wollybears all the time in fall. Usually you will just randomly encounter them running across the sidewalk.

Yeah, they are super common. I could find a lot more, but I really only like to observe this particular speciesb for a short time.

What are you feeding them?

Nathant wrote:What are you feeding them?

Just, dandelion leaves, clover, grass etc.One of the easiest species to keep for sure.

T.C. wrote:

Nathant wrote:What are you feeding them?

Just, dandelion leaves, clover, grass etc.One of the easiest species to keep for sure.

Cool. I may try my hands at keeping them when fall comes around.

For the first time of keeping these guys. They all died? The second one died first which I replaced with another one I found, and the two left died three days later. Humidy, and diet was good, so I am leaning more towards parasites is what killed them. So, I ended up throwing it all away to avoid any further damages to any of my other critters. However yesterday, I found this cocoon. I believe it's Pyrrharctia isabella as well. They overwinter as caterpillars, so I assume this was just made, or some other species. However I doubt that. We will see.

Found plenty of these guys. The pictures shown rae just showing a few of them I found.

These look more like milkweed tussock moths to me.

After some research appears to be a virginia ctenucha moth.