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Project Noah Nature School
Malacosoma Americanum
Populations fluctuate from year to year, with outbreaks occurring every several years. Defoliation of trees, building of unsightly silken nests in trees, and wandering caterpillars crawling over plants, walkways, and roads cause this insect to be a pest in the late spring and early summer.Eastern tent caterpillar nests are commonly found on wild cherry, apple, and crabapple, but may be found on hawthorn, maple, cherry, peach, pear and plum as well. While tent caterpillars can nearly defoliate a tree when numerous, the tree will usually recover and put out a new crop of leaves. In the landscape, however, nests can become an eyesore, particularly when exposed by excessive defoliation. The silken nests are built in the crotches of limbs and can become quite large.
Maple trees by lake in the park.
Looks like the nest of the Eastern tent caterpillar Moth. When the eggs hatch, you will see this 'tent" filled up with caterpillars. I took a photo of one like it in Alabama last summer, you can see the resemblance at: http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/742...
I honestly don't see a spider. That is not a spider's web, it is the web of Hyphantria cunea, or webworms. You can just make out the mass of their bodies in the middle, and their droppings a little below. What may at first glance appear to be a spider, looks to me like one of the dead leaves, that they have expanded their web to contain.
Spotted on Aug 16, 2014
Submitted on Mar 22, 2015
