catapillars

Nanny Beach

I might be able to get my daughter to post a pic later, but this is getting serious, we have a shrub, not sure what it is, over run by striped green,yellow,black catapillars about an inch long, but they are in thick webs a bit like spider webs,there are a mass in each web, found a web this morning full of tiny baclk eggs.  They are coming from a neighbours shrub again dont know aht it is, no point in taking a pic they have shredded it, no leaves left, but now they are moving onto our garden, any ideas would be great, and solutions.

wild edges

Have a look at the web caterpillar section in this article

http://www.wildlifeinsight.com/guide-to-british-caterpillars/caterpillar-survival-strategies/

Nanny Beach

have just taken some off the fence had a good look and they are in fact yellow, or khaki with black spots down their sides, thanks wild edges will have a look.

wild edges

Sounds like the Small ernine moth caterpillars. If the eggs look like the photo below then they're probably droppings.

https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=899

 

Nanny Beach

hah, (why am I laughing am fuming!) yes, just found it, thats what it is, also discovered our fig is alive with the **********s, thanksanyway

josusa47

Isn't it a bummer that we can't have butterflies and moths without having to have caterpillars?

I can sympathise with the grief of having a crop or display destroyed when you've been nurturing it for weeks or months.  But I can't bring myself to kill caterpillars.  It would be like inviting my friends to dinner then killing their children.

Especially since it was reported on Springwatch this week that flying insects remember their former lives as larvae.  Image being the one that escaped the massacre and survived to adulthood:  "You can plant all the buddleia you like, I'm not staying in the garden where my brothers and sisters were murdered."

Dovefromabove

@WonkyWomble pointing to her ‘butterfly farm’ ... ie her nasturtiums being devoured by caterpillars 🐛 a very long time ago. 

Sorry, I know that’s no consolation when your fig tree is being ravaged ... but it makes me smile 😊 

Singing Gardener

Mind you, one does sometimes feel like that about friends' children!

Visiting my mother in Cambridge a few years back I went to view the row of ornamental cherry trees on Jesus Green which had been completely stripped by these caterpillars. It was a very impressive, if rather eerie, sight.

Nanny Beach

Josusa47 how can anyone possibly know that, that had a quick death, (not by me) I am afraid I dont think like that every time I kill a green/white/black fly.  I have had this fig for years.  You cant aliken the demise of a catapilar with killing children.I can remember my late Mothers like that Dove, when was that pic taken?  I used to play with the pretty furry ones.  I used netting over the veg for the cabbage whites, but this is from a neighbours garden, had exact the same thing last year.  They appear to have killed his tree now, all the leaves have been eaten, the tree looks dead, and as you know Dove, from the other side, I have a 60 or more foot long of brambles coming over ruining my stuff, (plus clothes on removing them) dandilions, tthick ivy, fir trees, with the roots,and branches, AND now the front is full of valarian (as well as *****y weeds, which is coming up all through our drive (shingle) and now moving into the back garden.  Can someone lend me a few hundred grand so I can move to the middle of no-where please!