It takes all kinds to make a good garden – but this kind i would happily do without!
I have hundreds of these crawling around my garden and up to the house! 😦
This is the caterpillar of a White Cedar Moth (Leptocneria reducta) and are some 1.25 – 1.75 inches long! (3-5 cm) whose favourite food is the leaf of a White Cedar or Cape Lilac tree (also known as Chinaberry, Indian or Persian Lilac). To say they are voracious is to vastly understate the obvious as this pic of my recently very healthy and well-foliaged tree shows:
The only good thing i have to say about them is that they were kind enough to leave the berries (which are poisonous to us humans – as is most of this tree) for the Black Cockatoos that use the tree as a lunch stop. (You can see them and how the tree USED to look here).
They eat at night and mostly sleep during the day but when shooting the recent lunar eclipse i could hear the remnants of the leaves and branches they were munching falling to the grass from 30 ft (10 m) away.
It did produce a rather unusual photograph or 4 though…
“Don’t go into the light… don’t go into the light!” ( Actually – Go… GO!!! )
Sadly they don’t only come out at a full moon but every night for 6-7 months of the year – in waves (5-6 generations). 😦
I’m sure some of you can relate all too well?
love.
BLob's Blog 
They make for great photography under moonlight however.
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OK – there’s TWO things i don’t mind about them then! 😉
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Those are super photos!
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I was very happy how they came out 🙂
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Welcome to MY world! If those aren’t a dead ringer for the Gypsy Moth from which we had two horrible years of attacks. They stripped thousands of trees. The first year was beyond disgusting and to make it worse, Garry is allergic to them. The second year, we knew we were expecting them, so we had everything sprayed, so it was better for us, though they were still pretty bad elsewhere.
I swear those look like the same caterpillars.
And yes, you can hear them munching and crapping out all the residue. They are horrible, ugly things. I didn’t know they had made it all the way to you guys, but why not? They came originally from Europe, but they are now everywhere in North America and moving through Mexico towards South America. They hitch on boats and airplanes, so there’s no escaping them. Yuck.
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Deep sympathies for
Garry.
The weird thing about ours here is that while there are lots of trees around Perth these things will ONLY eat the Cape Lilac aka White Cedar There are two trees within 10 yards of the stripped one and they are untouched!
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The gypsy moth caterpillars will eat anything from a hard wood tree, though they are especially fond of oaks — and we live in an oak woods. But when they knock off the oaks, they will start to eat ANYTHING. So first, they strip the oak trees, then they go after the maples, the apple trees, the fir trees (which die if stripped, by the way) and eventually, they will eat the grass and the flowers too, though only when they’ve knocked off everything else and usually, by then, they are turning into moths and their season is done. But there’s usually a second year which can be worse than the first, but wasn’t this time. Trees can cope with one year of stripping. Two and the weaker ones start to fall down. Three … and whole forests turn into dead wood. Awful things. Awful.
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Yuk! I guess i should be grateful for small mercies!?
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You are lucky they are so restricted in what they will eat. Because if they ate more, it would be a LOT worse.
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*Click click*
I’ll actually read the blog now, I just had to get that out of my mind…
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It is sorta irresistible Isn’t it? 🙂
( The Addams Family Theme – not the blog!) 😉
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Lmfao yes it is… The Addams Family is awesome.
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Those moon photos are stunning!
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Thank you Am! (or Amberley or Amber, as you wish?)
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You can call me any of the above, but most of my mates call me Lemon or Lemons or some variation of of this lol… I get called a lot of things 🤣🤣
You’re welcome!
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Lemons it is! ( Lemon reminds me too much of U2’s ‘lemon’ which i can only say with some weird accent that just sounds creepy!) 😉
Have a great week! 🙂
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Bahahahahahahahaha as soon as you said U2s lemon I had that voice in my head. Most of the time I hear it said in my head in Alec Baldwin’s voice from 30 rock…
Have a good one darl…
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