Winter-pillars

Wow, winter is almost over!  A few short weeks without a post, and my field season has withered away.  Well despite the blog silence, I have continued to actively seek out winter insects with much success.  I'll have a number of back-order blog posts to make, but here are a few sightings that are fairly recent.

Lepidoptera seem to require fairer weather than some other winter-active insects, so it hasn't come as a surprise to find lep numbers on the rise as temps become more mild.  Here are two recent snow caterpillar sightings:



While doing some birding last Friday, this "cutworm" was crawling across the snow in a parking lot in Burlington, near a soldier beetle larva.  Thanks to the help of Sam Jaffe, this fellow was ID'd as Noctua pronuba.

Another caterpillar, encountered the next day on the snow in Colchester in a wetland:

While very small, this caterpillar has the distinctive markings of a Haploa sp.  As adults, they come in stunning patterns of black-and-white, with orange in their bodies.