Gregarious – Tendrils

Black Vultures

Yesterday I took recycling and trash to the landfill and recycling center down in town. There is always a population of gregarious Black Vultures hanging around the facility looking for a meal. They’re most often in the trees. This day though they were convened on a hillside as if at the edge of a lake or at the shore, so I had to take advantage of the situation and get some pictures. It was interesting approaching these creatures. They tolerated my presence and just moved away slightly, slowly, if I got too close. It was as if they were all thinking, “Okay, who let this woman in?”

These large birds are part of Mother Nature’s cleanup crew, two, to two and a half feet long, head to tail. With a wingspan of around five feet. They’re called Mother Nature’s cleanup crew since they help stop the spread of disease by removing carcasses and actually eating dangerous pathogens. With powerful stomach acid and gut flora they help decontaminate our environment. Black Vultures are native to northeastern United States to South America, all the way to Peru, Central Chile and Uruguay. The more I read about them the more I appreciate them.

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Yellow Bear Caterpillar

Yellow Bear Caterpillar (Spilosoma virginica). This is the larval stage of the Virginian Tiger Moth. These caterpillars are covered in tufts, or small tubercles, which contain many hairs of different lengths. Varying in color from caterpillar to caterpillar from snow white, soft yellow, brown-yellow, to orange-red.

The Yellow Bear Caterpillar is not poisonous but folks with sensitive skin could end up with an allergic reaction to these hairs. If you happen to have one come to rest on you, carefully remove it with a leaf.

When fully grown as a caterpillar, the Yellow Bears will be 2 inches long. They live across all of North America feeding, as generalists, upon their host plants of many vegetable, fruit, flower, weed, tree species as well as field crops. Vegetable gardens provide hosts to them with carrot, corn, cauliflower, potato and pumpkin. Also targeted are grasses and clovers. As they eat they skeletonize leaves. These caterpillars should be of no concern until the summer into fall group arrives on the scene. Until then there are not enough caterpillars to do any real damage to plants and trees.

Eggs of Yellow Bear Caterpillars are laid, 20 to 100 in a single layer on the undersides of host plants’ leaves. The eggs will hatch in about a week. The young caterpillars at this early stage are gregarious, feeding together on the leaves where they hatched. As they mature they will feed on their own.

After about 4 weeks, going from gregarious to independent, they are fully grown and seek secluded places to pupate. You’ll see mature caterpillars May through November. To pupate, caterpillars spin cocoons and spend the next 1 to 2 weeks transforming into moths.

The adult Virginia Tiger Moth is nearly all snow white except for one or two minuscule black spots on each wing. Their fuzzy legs are the same snow white with a few black spots. The midsection of the body shows bright yellow near the head and black dots along either side. Its wingspan is 1 to 2 inches.

Cherry Scallop Shell Moth

Cherry Scallop Shell Moth (Rheumaptera prunivorata) looking like someone all set to go to the office donned in their favorite warm woolen herringbone business suit. Or perhaps it looks like my tiger-striped kitty that I had when I was little. Tinker. But these wavy stripes are quite distinctive even for a moth. This moth is found in eastern North America from Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario south through the US to Georgia. Its caterpillars eat the leaves of cherry trees though its very favorite leaf is the Black Cherry. The larvae of the Cherry Scallop Shell Moth are gregarious and feed together, seeking shelter in little tents they make by tying leaves together with silk.