1 August 2012
Posted by Callan Bentley
In Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, my students and I camped under the shade of cottonwood trees…
But some of the cottonwoods’ branches were looking a little thin… Caterpillars were munching on their leaves.
And some trees had been completely denuded by the voracious little larvae:
All three photos are taken on roughly the same scale (note the Moon as a reference point in each!).
Callan Bentley is Associate Professor of Geology at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. For his work on this blog, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers recognized him with the James Shea Award. He has also won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia, and the Biggs Award for Excellence in Geoscience Teaching from the Geoscience Education Division of the Geological Society of America. In previous years, Callan served as a contributing editor at EARTH magazine, President of the Geological Society of Washington and President the Geo2YC division of NAGT.
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Sad caterpillar damage, but I wanted to point out that the Moon is not useful as a reference scale in images like these. The Moon does have a constant angular size but a large tree far away may have the same angular size as a small tree close up. Still, the images are on very similar scales, since the leaves/branches have similar apparent sizes.
Right. Hard to convey sarcasm via the written word, I guess. Sorry my meaning didn’t come through! 🙂
I had beetles eating my cheery trees down to the nub. I decided to spray. I try not to because the trees are a hobby and the birds eat the fruit anyway but the beetles were killing the trees so spraying it was. I was gone an hour rounding up with the stuff for the battle with the beetles, I came back to the orchard and there a flock of black birds chowing down on the beetles-no spray needed . Less than an hour later, no bugs and no birds, lots of bird crap all over the place.