By a little searching almost any time after the middle of June, one is
likely to find a curious caterpillar home upon some of the oak leaves.
The margin of the blade has been turned over, generally from above
downward but sometimes from below upward, and has been fastened down
to the main expanse of the blade by means of golden threads; commonly
this fastening is not continuous but is more or less intermittent, so
that the turned-over margin is likely to have an irregular border
where it joins the blade. Inside of this tubular construction a rather
unusual looking worm-like caterpillar is probably to be seen. Late in
the season it will probably be nearly an inch long, with a smooth
greenish body and a head that may be a bit brownish and more or less
marked on the sides with orange tones.
This is the larva of one of the most widely distributed
Skippers--Juvenal's Dusky-wing. The species is found from southern New
Hampshire west to the Great Plains and south to the Gulf of Mexico. In
most localities it is seldom abundant but yet is so general that it
may be found by almost every persistent collector. The wings expand
about an inch and a half and are of a dull brownish color, more or
less marked with darker and lighter spots. Toward the northern limits
of its range there is but one brood a year but farther south there are
two, although it is not improbable that some of the caterpillars of
the first brood remain unchanged throughout the season, so that the
insect is both single- and double-brooded in the same locality.
_The Yearly Cycle_
The yearly cycle in southern New Hampshire may be taken as an
illustration of the life of the species in regions where there is but
one brood. The butterflies appear in open woods and on cut-over lands
in May and June. They lay eggs upon the twigs of oak trees, one egg in
a place and generally near a leaf stem. The egg soon hatches into a
little caterpillar that crawls upon a near-by leaf and begins the
construction of its tubular nest by bending over the margin and sewing
it with golden silk. It utilizes this nest chiefly as a tent for
resting and sleeping and wanders away from it generally to another
leaf when it is ready to feed. It grows very slowly, having before it
all the weeks of summer to complete its caterpillar growth. As it gets
larger it needs a new tent and is likely to desert its early one. When
it does this some observers have noted a curious habit. It cuts loose
all the silk that binds the margin of the leaf down upon the blade so
that the flap is free to spring back to its original position. It
would be difficult to suggest an adequate explanation for this habit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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