Formerly Grammia arge, which is the name it can be found under in Wagner's excellent field guide.*
The 'Speedy Gonzalez' of the caterpillar world, this critter can zip along at 1.4 km/h for short bursts. And is was zooming across my driveway.
I took these pictures on August 24th, but it took me awhile to figure out what this is. At least well enough to call it for the blog. And the name change was part of the story. I had, with help from folks on the interwebs, ID'd it to genus Apantesis, but looking up that led nowhere in field guides and even on the web. I finally took the time to brute force the ID by looking through BugGuide, at lots of pictures until I found a match. A bit of work, but it is actually fun to figure it out.
🐛 🐛 🐛 🐛 🐛
You can find all of the Yard Critter posts listed here.
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* Caterpillars of the Eastern North America, David L. Wagner. But you knew that already, right?
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