Monday, September 12, 2011

Quick Caterpillar post

We've been staying busy here in So. Maryland, doing everything but fishing. The rockfish fishing should get nothing but better as the months go on, so plan on reading SOMETHING that has to do with fishing in the near future.

We spent Saturday afternoon at our company picnic. My wife and I fancy ourselves as keen observers of the subtle and minutiae in the ecosystems. In actuality, she's probably better than I am. Anyway, she spotted this very cool caterpillar on a stone path, so I had to take it's picture. It measured probably 3" long and was as fat as my thumb. Then the fun began - I know nothing about caterpillar ID.




I went online with my picture and, after working my way through several pages of the seemingly endless varieties of caterpillars, I found the identity of our mystery fellow. A White-Lined Sphinx moth. Which, in layman's terms, is one of my favorite critters at the butterfly bush - a hummingbird moth!!


Photo by Raymond Christensen

The caterpillar / butterfly / moth group could take a person years to figure out. I'm not ready to dedicate that kind of time, but I DO think they're pretty cool.

8 comments:

Kirk Mantay said...

wolfie, try bugguide.net ; it's what all the lazy biologists use.

cofisher said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
cofisher said...

See, I was so excited to see you post that my comment was unreadable! That's what I thought it was! No, I really didn't have a clue but it's nice to hear you're at least outdoors.

Casey said...

You rock, nonetheless -

Team MiRketti said...

The title of this post caught my eye and I had to read it. Glad I did.

Fly Waters Edge - Kevin said...

Cool!

The Four Season Angler said...

Glad to see you out and about in your new environment Joe.

Anonymous said...

That is pretty cool and very similar to the caterpillars that were crawling all over the path I run at the park. I thought they were blowing leaves at first (because I was going so fast of course... j/k) but when I stopped to look, they weren't. Needless to say the rest of my run was spent looking at the ground instead of at the scenery, so not to squish any of them!