more about catalpa worms

My blog has a "statistics" page that I can look at. It doesn't tell me who is reading my blog...but it tells me things like what country the readers are from and which posts get the most views.

It's surprising to me - but a post I did about Catalpa Worms two years ago, gets readers more often than anything else I have put on here.
Either someone has linked to it somewhere or it's showing up in a search engine.

The original post is HERE.

So with that in mind, I would like to show a few more photos that were taken by the Sasquatch, who has a huge Catalpa tree in his yard.
If this is interesting to you, you might want to biggie size the pictures.

There are lots of Catalpa worms on the tree right now. Those bubble-looking things are the eggs that were laid by a Sphinx Moth on the underside of a leaf on the Catalpa tree.
The clear eggs near the top center have already hatched. To the left of those you can see a couple of yellow eggs...those haven't hatched yet.
A little lower, you can see small black pointy things. Each one is on the back of one of the worms.

Here are some tiny, newly hatched worms.

Here is a group of slightly older worms.  Look how they have been munching away at those leaves!

All are Catalpa worms - not sure why some are mostly yellow and others are mostly black.

 Eating all but the skeleton of the leaf.

The end with the pointy thing is the tail. It isn't sharp and doesn't sting. Maybe it's to fool predators?

A smaller one...

And a larger one...

And you can imagine...with all those worms eating leaves there is a copious amount of poop!

The Sasquatch said, when you are standing near the tree, it sounds like rain drops are starting to fall on the leaves...but it's a rain of worm poop!

Some years there are just a few worms and other years they eat every leaf on the tree.   It doesn't seem to harm the tree at all. If it's still early in the summer - it grows another set of leaves...but there may be a new cycle of worms that will eat the new leaves.

 More info about Catalpa Trees HERE
More info about the Sphinx Moth HERE

Can you believe the Sasquatch took all those vivid close up pictures with his phone?
This last photo is one that I took of his Catalpa tree with my camera.
Huge difference in picture quality!  Hmm...is it the equipment or the operator?

Later in the summer the tree will be full of long bean-like pods that are filled with seeds. The Sasquatch has a couple of other smaller Catalpa trees on his property that have come up from the seeds.

I started one of the seeds in a flower pot here a few years ago and planted it when it got big enough.

It's about seven or eight feet tall now. They grow pretty fast!

The moths don't seem to lay eggs on the small young trees. We assumed that they "know" there aren't enough leaves on them yet to feed their babies.