Cecropia Caterpillar Starting to Make Cocoon!
After a summer of raising cecropia caterpillars and being down to only one caterpillar left alive, our caterpillar is starting to make it’s cocoon! We’re excited to have another cocoon to hopefully hatch out next summer. With any luck it will be a female and we can get another brood of caterpillars next summer! Here are a couple of pics of the start of the cocoon.
Caterpillar is inside all the silk – kind of under the leaf a bit and sticking out the other side
On this pic you can just see the edges of the caterpillar’s tubercles sticking out from under the side of the leaf.
Moth I.D. – Large Lace-border Moth
This moth comes from the Geometrid moth family. We saw it in our yard in early July. It is white with off-white symmetrical lines across it and a lacy edge along the wings. Very pretty for a moth!
Moth I.D. – some kind of Tiger Moth
I’m not sure what kind of tiger moth this is, but it’s very pretty and was found in our yard one evening. It’s front top wings are black with white lines or stripes around on it. The wings that are underneath and sometimes hidden are a bright red with black dots or splotches on it. Very pretty! We took some pics then let it go.
Caterpillar and Moth I.D. – White-marked Tussock Moth
We found this caterpillar a few weeks ago on a vine in our yard. It was black with light green stripes, light green round bumps on top, a couple red tubercles, and lots of white and cream-colored hairy tufts sticking out in different places.
We fed it some of the plant it was on when we found it and not too much later it made it’s cocoon.
We noticed the cocoon get brighter white and then turn a darker color before the moth emerged. It just emerged today!
These moths overwinter as eggs before hatching and growing. The female moths happen to be wingless and lay their eggs on their cocoon before dying. I am always amazed to find caterpillars and see what they become!
Cecropia Moth Update Again
We are still raising a cecropia moth caterpillar. Of the caterpillars we started with, only 2 are still alive. I’m not sure why the others died, but 2 still seem to be doing well. We switched which apple tree we were taking leaves from and that seemed to help a couple of them but the others died. Hopefully one or both of them will make it to the cocoon state! Here are a few pics of one of our cecropias.
Latest Cecropia Moth Caterpillar Pics – later instar
We’ve been raising cecropia moths this summer. I have former entries that show how they’ve changed from small black caterpillars to yellow and black caterpillars to adding some orange tubercles on them. Now they have some incredible colors on them! I love these pics – my ds did a watercolor painting of them for his nature notebook and it looked very colorful and beautiful! It is so neat watching the changes these caterpillars make! Enjoy!
Side view of a caterpillar. I love watching them walk – their feet look like they’re doing the wave!
Top View – shows how the middle has turned almost a blue/green color with the head being more green. I think their tubercles are so pretty!
Cecropia Caterpillar Changes
Cecropia Caterpillar on June 15, 2007
It’s been really neat to watch these caterpillars change and grow! When they hatched they were 1/4″ long and were black. Then they changed to being yellow and black. It was interesting – as they first shed their skins, they would be a bright yellow, but the yellow would fade some after a while. They were then yellow with black spines sticking up. The caterpillars in the pic below that are yellow are ones who have just molted and look very yellow.
After this, they then got their orange tubercles sticking up in the front. In the picture below you can see a yellow caterpillar with 2 sets of orange tubercles. They have now been turning more of green / blue-green and still have their 2 sets of orange tubercles. They almost seem to have some blue tubercles coming out of the sides near their heads. They are really cool looking right now!
We have been feeding some lilac leaves, and others apple leaves. They do eat lilac leaves, but the few that we have eating lilac leaves are way behind size-wise to the ones eating apple leaves. We still have over 30 caterpillars eating apple leaves but as they eat more and more leaves, we’re slowly releasing them onto the tree as we can’t care for too many now that they’re eating so much! It’s been very neat seeing these caterpillars and all their changes!
Cecropia Moth Update
Our caterpillars continue to do well. They are still yellow with black spines on them. They are devouring more and more leaves so we have slowly been releasing more onto host plants so we don’t need to keep feeding them every few hours!
One other exciting event happened on Saturday. The moth we got the caterpillars from that we have been raising came from a cocoon I found late winter this year. We also had two cecropia moth cocoons in a butterfly cage. These cocoons were from caterpillars that we had found the end of last summer. They had made cocoons on our cage and we didn’t know if they would ever emerge. We had kind of lost hope after the one came out that we found in the wild, but Sat we came home to find another cecropia moth had emerged!
We set it free outside to see if this one would fly away. It didn’t fly immediately. It was also a female and attracted a male and it then laid it’s eggs on our trellis. I don’t know why it didn’t fly to a tree first! So we may need to rescue some of these caterpillars when they hatch! The moth has since flown away. SO, we’ll be busy with caterpillars for sure!
Cecropia Moth Caterpillars!
This winter on a nature walk, I found a cocoon attached to a branch. I broke it off and put it in our butterfly cage and waited to see if it would emerge this spring. Towards the end of March, a cecropia moth emerged from the cocoon.
We kept it a little while then tried to set it free outside but it wouldn’t fly away and the next day on a windy day, it’s wings got all battered. We set it down on the ground to see what it would day. The following day we checked on it and there were 2 moths and they were mating! We had a female moth who sent out it’s scent to attract a mate who had flown over to mate with our moth. We put them in our cage. The next day the female began laying eggs all over our cage!
It took about 11 days for the eggs to hatch and then we had cecropia caterpillars all over our cage! We carefully moved them to smaller containers and fed some lilac leaves and some apple tree leaves. Both foods were eaten without a problem. Daily we change the leaves and clean out the containers and watch them grow!
Today we noticed that while they’re molting, they’re changing color. We had read about the color changes they go through over the summer. Right now they’re changing from black to yellow and black. It’s interesting – when they first come out of their skin, they’re a fairly bright yellow color with a little black, but the longer they’ve been out, the duller yellow they become.
