Sunday, August 9, 2015

A walk in New Jersey

I took a nice long walk in New Jersey today. I was about an hour's drive from New York City in Hopewell. It looked like this... 
I saw this huge caterpillar, fat, and about 4 inches long. It's a Pandorus Sphinx moth caterpillar, Eumorpha pandorus.  It's one of the caterpillars commonly called a hornworm, because in its younger stages it sports a horn on its rear end (which is on the left in this photo).  Click to enlarge. 
The spot where the horn grows becomes a button on later-stage caterpillars like this one. It's that eye-like black spot-in-a-circle.  One of its foods is Virginia creeper; there was lots of it around. 
And lots of Queen Anne's lace. 
And lots of butterflies. The one on the left in this picture, is a female clouded sulphur. On the right, in flight and blurry, is an orange sulphur male. These two species sometimes hybridize so they may have been up to something. 
And this young fellow peeked out from the trees. 

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