how do they do it? seeing larvae

[Liz Day]

Just returned from a "collecting" trip (really an "oh my, looky at that!") 
trip, in which I identified some larvae using the Caterpillars of Eastern 
Forests book.

This book makes me wonder:   Just how did the authors, or anyone else, 
obtain some of these larvae?

For instance, I have never seen a Tiger Swallowtail larva, and of most 
sphinx moths, and have no idea how I could do so (besides buying 
them).   The female TS won't lay eggs in a paper bag like a moth.  Some 
butterflies you can follow her and pick up the eggs, but I never see TS 
engaged in egg-laying,  just flying rapidly along way up in the trees 
(usually I can't even keep them in view very long).   With cherry and other 
host trees, 99% of the plant is out of reach, so I don't think searching 
for larvae would work well, unless you could do it from a cherry 
picker.  So how the heck do people ever see this caterpillar, other than by 
pure chance?

Same question, for those kinds of moths that won't lay eggs in a paper bag, 
and whose larvae feed up in trees.    I'm having caterpillar envy!

Thanks,
Liz Day
Indianapolis, Indiana, central USA
daylight at kiva.net


Larvae seen in Posey Co., extreme SW Indiana:
monarch on that vining milkweed
silver-spotted skipper (egg, too)
viceroy
question mark
buckeye (chrysalis too)
painted lady (??)
unknown lycaenid on wingstem attended by ants
smeared dagger moth (?) on polygonum
Virginia bear arctiid moth (unbelievably abundant)
poplar tentmaker prominent moth (defoliating everything in sight)
2 different large twig-mimicking inchworms on sandbar willow

At New Harmony, IN, across from the Atheneum, is a field with apple trees 
and oodles of 6 or 7 kinds of nymphalids feeding on the rotting fruit 
including tawny emperor.   These butterflies were easy to pick up on your 
finger. Nearby a garden with balsam is loaded with pipevine swallowtails.

At Mt. Vernon, IN, I had a dramatic look at a pink-spotted sphinx moth 
drinking from evening primrose around midnight after a rain.  Its eyes 
blazed like neon rubies in my flashlight beam through 20 feet of fog and 
mist.  It flew and hovered with the tongue hanging out like an elephant's 
trunk.  This tongue must have been 3-4" long; the moth barely needed to 
approach to reach the masses of flowers, which smelled faintly like 
honeysuckle.  Amazing.


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Liz Day
Indianapolis, Indiana, central USA  (40 N, ~86 W)
Home of budgerigar Tweeter and the beautiful pink inchworm (Eupithecia 
miserulata).
USDA zone 5b.  Winters ~20F, summers ~85F.  Formerly temperate deciduous 
forest.
daylight at kiva.net
www.kiva.net/~daylight
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