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!).
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.