05 June 2010

The worms of Southend Cemetery
















This is the amazing scene at Southend Cemetery in Essex UK. Millions of caterpillars spinning their silk webs all over the trees. In their caterpillar stage, the bugs, known as web worms, weave leaves of trees together and eat them. They are bird cherry tree ermine moths and when they emerge fully grown, they become distinctive white moths with five rows of black dots. It gives the cemetery a kind of eerie winter wonderland feel!

5 comments:

  1. Ohmigosh - these are eerie! And I thought our bagworms did a job on our trees here.

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  2. Do they kill the trees? It looks like it. How very unusual the trees look.

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  3. No the trees do recover which is why they are not exterminated. The same thing happened there last year apparently.

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  4. I don't know about that, but in this case it's true!

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