North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Betty Mayfield <bmayfield@opusnet.com>]

Diane,

Tried a Google search on winter moth and came up with Operophtera 
brumata with a description like yours. A University of Massachusetts 
page said it had spread from eastern Canada to western, as you said, 
and then down to Washington, Oregon and New England.

But it is definitely not what I had, which local newspapers referred 
to as a tent caterpillar outbreak. However, as I said, my "tents" 
were like the fall webworm, while the heavy outbreak of adult moths 
noted earlier definitely resembled the eastern tent caterpillar.

One other oddity - both the winter moth and fall webworm adults are 
described as being attracted to lights, but not the adult of the 
eastern tent caterpillar.

I definitely remember the "thump, thump, thump" of heavy moth bodies 
hitting the windows at night when the lights were on. Daylight 
confirmed that the moths were brown and thick-bodied, but the fall 
webworm moth is described as pure white.

Betty Mayfield
Northwest Oregon

At 08:42 PM 6/1/2008, Diane wrote:
> On 1-Jun-08,  Betty Mayfield wrote:
>
> > During my recent Google search on caterpillars, I found the
> > description of the forest tent caterpillar (Malacosome disstria)
> > similar to your description.
>
>
> I remember a really bad outbreak of tent caterpillars about 1944.
> There has not been an equivalent infestation since.  Everything was
> covered with them, and the neighbours all along the street were
> scooping them into containers - the women using tablespoons so they
> wouldn't have to touch them, and the kids just using fingers.  Then
> the boxes of them were tossed into our woodstoves.  Unfortunately,
> ours was burning when my mother tossed them in, and when she went to
> make dinner, there were caterpillars crawling all over the stove.
>
> No, this winter moth is not a local insect.  It is European, but had
> been in Nova Scotia (on the Atlantic coast of Canada) before arriving
> on the Pacific coast, probably on some nursery stock, though it
> wouldn't have been on fruit trees as they have to be fumigated before
> being sent out West.  Of course, someone might have done an illegal
> private importation.
>
> It was devastating because it was new and  there were no predators
> here until they were imported after a number of years of total
> defoliation of all deciduous trees. The leafless trees made it seem as
> though winter went on for a very long time.
>
> Diane Whitehead
> Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
> maritime zone 8, cool Mediterranean climate
> mild rainy winters, mild dry summers
>
>
>
>
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