We have a welcome break from hidden nightjars, for Reader Mark Sturtevant (whose photos of a caterpillar molting appeared this week), has a cryptic arthropod:
Today I have a small challenge for your readers. Somewhere in this picture is a rather well camouflaged 3 inch long caterpillar that is sitting in plain sight. Can your readers spot the caterpillar? This is one of many of this species that I found this summer. The first reader to find it will earn a nightjar point.
For an additional challenge, can the caterpillar be identified to species? This too may not be too difficult once the target is acquired. A hint is that this caterpillar lives in the U.S.
Click photo to enlarge. I’ll give the answer later today.
Can I get a keychain today? 🙂
I think it’s the leaf toward the upper left that is the only one that is shaped like a cylinder. It doesn’t exactly look like a caterpillar but the shape is right.
Hmmm. I’m going with the straight, light colored “branch” at 9 o’clock, left of center, 2/3rds the way up the pic.
Same for me.
Can’t see the caterpillar but the leaves of the tree upper left look like sweet chestnut which I thought had become extinct in the US following a fungal disease in early 20C.
More like a chinquapin oak?
Not extinct, just reduced to (mostly) sapling-sized re-sprouts. But I found a couple of pretty big ones (c. 1 ft. d.b.h, 35-40 ft tall)this past summer in RI. I’m sure there must be more in that size range, but those are the biggest I’ve seen.
Is it “sitting” in a lawnchair?
And uh sub
The critter whose head and segments can be demarcated is vertically stretched between two twigs, slightly left of the tree trunk, two thirds down the photo.
It’s inside the Nightjar.
Digesting:-)
Powder green leaf at branch tip, slightly left of center, about 1/5 up from the bottom of picture. Looks like a sphinx moth caterpillar. In compensation, I can never find the nightjar.
More precisely: 45% distance (left to right) across photo, 18% up (bottom to top).
As near as I can tell by the various coordinates given, no one has gotten it yet.
It would help if this wasn’t shot with a potato.
My guess: Follow the most prominent branch, which starts at the bottom of the picture, up towards the viewers right. In the photo, the caterpillar’s head very slightly overlaps the branch. He is facing left, has a white back, and legs very caterpillar green and black. Haven’t a clue what he is–just hope I got the apostrophes in the right place.
“…up towards the viewers right.”
Ahem.
😀
Is it to the lower left, about 1/5 of the distance from bottom, just a short distance from the left edge of the photo, just at the base of a forking twig? I see there a bright green caterpillar-ish shape, sort of looks like a Polyphemus caterpillar . . .
Damn, is this caterpillar ( pillar cat?) named Spot as well? Very confusing…
No idea here where it is, but shouldn’t it be called a KITTEHpillar?
There it’s not!