Heavy-duty caterpillaring

A fine group of intellectually curious people convened in Adams County, Ohio over the weekend - our 6th annual get-together, ostensibly to search for caterpillars. And that we do, but as always the foray becomes a natural history free-for-all, and we find lots of other STUFF. Our base camp is John and Tina Howard's Ohio Star Retreat Center. Most of the group stays here, and we all converge on the place to have meals, and photograph temporarily detained caterpillar livestock. It's a great place to stay of you're in Adams County, especially if you are in pursuit of the region's abundant natural history.

The group changes form a bit each year, and we always have one or a few new people, but most of the caterpillar-hunters in this image have been to a few or all of these strange outings. It's a blast, with lots of nocturnal field work. The group is, from back row (L to R): Tom Patt, Sue Zacharias, Chris Zacharias, Ann Geise, Sally Miller, Frances Ganance, Chelsea Gottfried, John Howard, Randy Lakes (peeking over John's right shoulder), and Jason Larson. Front row (L to R): Kyle Bailey, Kim Banks, Colleen Sharkey, Gina Patt, your narrator, Molly Kenney, and Dan Kenney. Not pictured is Judy Ganance, who kindly took the photo. Laura Hughes, Mary Ann Barnett, and Kathy and Ned Keller also joined in for part of the excursion, but weren't there when we took this photo. Sorry if I'm missing anyone else.

I took a boatload of photos, but haven't processed many caterpillar images yet. More of those will hopefully follow, in a future post. This is a saddleback caterpillar, Acharia stimulea, always a crowd-pleaser. Fun to look at, less amusing to the touch. This caterpillar packs a punch, possessing one of the most painful stings of any North American caterpillar.

This is the architecturally ornate larva of the comma butterfly, Polygonia comma. Our official larval scribe, Judy Ganance, recorded nearly 50 species of caterpillars seen by the group.