Nature is Cool, and Cruel

With only a couple exceptions, we welcome all natural visitors to the garden. We want a vivid ecosystem, and we have it. The only insects we remove (by hand)  are milkweed pests--aphids, Milkweed Beetles, and the Milkweed Tussock Moth caterpillars. Monarch caterpillars are toxic due to the latex in the milkweed they eat, and birds know to leave them alone. Birds come through occasionally looking for insects in the mulch and have never eaten anything we wish they hadn't, until this week. 

When Rick took this photo, he was just capturing the image of the thrush in the garden. not seeing the green in the beak. A couple seconds later, the bird stopped by the Pentas, looked in, and grabbed something else, ripping something out of the low leaves. Rick zoomed in. 

Uh-oh. Also, what is that? We knew of nothing that used the Pentas as a host plant. But when we examined the plant, we found a survivor. 

The Eastern Tiger Swallowtail caterpillar is green and ​has fake eyes, but they lay their eggs in trees. No record of Pentas. A little research revealed it to be a Tersa Sphinx Moth caterpillar. We had never seen this one in the garden. We would have remembered it. See photo below, courtesy Jay Smith. 

We decided to protect the little guy, putting an inverted milk crate over the plant. Happy to say, it is growing and has advanced to its larger brown instar. It will soon burrow into the surface debris to pupate and hopefully emerge next year.