Luna Moth Caterpillar

This Luna Moth Caterpillar was photographed while I was staying with my daughter in CT. She has a lot of wooded property and this was in her back yard.

The Luna Moth Caterpillar (Actias luna) can usually be found in deciduous forests in the Eastern half of the United States and Southern Canada. These caterpillars eat the foliage of hickory, walnut, sweet gum, persimmon, birch and sometimes other trees.

The Luna Moth is only found in North America and is considered endangered.

Inchworm

Sorry I've left you all wondering whatever happened to me. I must apologize for leaving you all in the lurch.

It all started at Thanksgiving time, when I got Pneumonia. It took 3 rounds of antibiotics to get rid of the Pneumonia, but it left me depressed and tired. I went on vacation to NY to see the grandkids and then to CT to see my kids, but it still wasn't enough to shake the depression. While I brought my camera gear with me, I never took it out of the case. The only photos I shot during the whole time was about 10 photos with my camera phone of my grand and great grandchildren. I just didn't feel like taking photos or anything else for that matter.

When I got home from my vacation I found out that I had to move by 2/11. That didn't give me very much time to raise money for the move and to find a place I could afford. I've always been a deadline person, so I got busy and finally found a great place with a wonderful view in downtown St Petersburg. I'm just loving it here.

Finally, I'm over the depression and fully recovered from the Pneumonia and have started to shoot a bit again (I think it was the move that got me out of it).

This one today is of an Inchworm that was inching his way across the mud catcher in front of the doorway of the building I moved to. I didn't have my camera on me, but I had my trusty old camera phone, so I got down on all fours and made a shot of him. Imagine finding something like this in the middle of the city!

The inchworm is the larvae or caterpillar of the Geometrid Moth. There are so many varieties in their coloring and markings that it was hard to identify it correctly. I'm still not 100% sure. Hopefully, one of you will be able to confirm my guess or correct it.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Caterpillar

I got up this morning and went out on the patio like I do every morning to enjoy my cup of coffee and watch the birds hunting for their breakfast, when all of a sudden I look down and spotted this cute little caterpillar on the ground just beneath my feet.

He must be lost, since their host plants are the leaves of cherry, ash and poplar trees. He wasn't moving very fast, so I ran in, grabbed my camera and a +3 closeup filter for a rare opportunity to create a macro. Realizing that when using closeup filters or doing any kind of macro work, the depth of field is pretty shallow, I closed down my aperture to F11 and shot away. He hardly moved a bit. Once I was sure I made my photo, I picked him up and moved him toward the rear of the patio when he wouldn't be stepped on.

After my coffee, I checked my butterfly book to see what their host plants are and realized that I had none of them in my yard. The closest thing I have to any of their preferred trees are a couple of Malaleuca trees. These trees are in the Poplar tree family, but the foliage was too high for me to place him on a leaf. I just set him down near the bottom of one of the trees and I'm hoping he'll find his way to the foliage.

This is one of the most interesting looking caterpillars I've seen. As far as I can tell, there are no hairs on his body like we usually see when looking at caterpillars. Those black spots with yellow above them are not eyes; but they are called eye spots. The markings are there to fool predators. If you look closely, you can see small blue dots along his margin near his belly. I would think that these are the little blue smudges that are seen on the back of the butterfly's wings right between the little tails. That's only a guess, because other than that I can't see any similarity between the caterpillar and the butterfly.

Imagine what a miracle their transformation or Chrysalis is? Caterpillars and butterflies aren't even remotely similar in appearance, but after their pupa stage they emerge into beautiful flying flowers. How wonderful is that?