A walk in Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge on April 21, 2023, was filled with sightings of white silken "tents" on the trees along the road and in the woods. In one such tent there were hundreds of tent caterpillars (genus Malacosoma, family Lasiocampidae). Tent caterpillars, or moth larvae, build their tents to catch the morning sun so that they elevate their temperature in the cooler spring days. Tent caterpillars are considered pests because they can defoliate a large number of deciduous trees in a short time. Many consider the tents unsightly. But they rarely destroy the trees, and they can provide food for other wildlife.
I found the movement of these caterpillars hypnotic and very eerie. The music in the video is Frédéric Chopin's Prelude in A flat major, B. 86, performed by Steven Robert Otto and obtained from MusOpen.org, a royalty-free music source.
