Swallowtail on Wild Cherry - Papilio glaucus

Tiger Swallowtail

Tiger Swallowtails stay in a 'heads up' position and on a silk pad - visible in the photo. Spicebush usually knit the sides of the leaf together and 'hide' inside the leaves of Spicebush (Lindera benzoin) or Sassafras with no padding. Hope this helps.

… Jackie, 8 May, 2006 - 8:39am

Ah, nice observation!

I found a reference to that behavior in Minno (1), too. I'm going to move both these to Tiger Swallowtail - all of the available evidence is pointing that way.

… Hannah Nendick-Mason, 8 May, 2006 - 8:46am

Interesting

I haven't found any refences to cherry as a host for Spicebush, but Wagner does list it as a host for Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. He describes the first three instars of that species (Eastern Tiger) as being like bird-droppings - I wonder if this is one of those? In which case, perhaps this other recent submission is one, too.

I found this comparable image via Google.

… Hannah Nendick-Mason, 7 May, 2006 - 11:56am

again

this caterpillar may be a Tiger Swallowtail because it has rows of blue spots, which the Spicebush lacks... check the guide on the Tiger cats and you'll see what I mean.

http://bugguide.net/images/cache/VLMZDLXZ2L2RTZIRQHIRKH6RRHGRQHQZVL6RFZ3LTZSR6LSZOLQZPL0RYZ3LTZ0RNLKRWLXRWLIRTZLZOLSZ2LMR.jpg

… Ray Simpson, 7 May, 2006 - 7:46pm

Thumbnails

It's much easier to get the image number (this is image 51113, for instance)
and tell BugGuide to make a thumbnail image: [thumb:28994]
Result:

The long trail of alphabet soup you cited just points to the thumbnail image itself,
without including the link to the image page that you get with the [thumb:28994] method:

For more information, look at Markup under the Help tab.

… Chuck Entz, 8 May, 2006 - 12:14am

spicebush

That image above is mine from a few days ago... I found my caterpillar on Sweetbay and it looks like this one... but again I don't know what the Tiger's early instar looks like

… Ray Simpson, 7 May, 2006 - 7:41pm

Clarification:

Sorry Ray, I forget that relative newcomers aren't familiar with all the mark-ups we old-timers do as a matter of course. The Googled image to which I referred is reached by following the blue underlined link in the final sentence of my comment above, whereas clicking on the thumbnail image will take you to your submission including your copyright and all the comments made on it. I didn't mean to imply I found your image via Google.

I agree with you that probably both of these are tigers, but the best way to confirm is to raise them to adulthood, or at least to a more distinctive instar. The printed references only have images of the later instars for several Swallowtail species in which early instars are described as being like bird droppings, and we are still sorting them out on this site.

… Hannah Nendick-Mason, 8 May, 2006 - 6:37am

Looks . . .

. . . like a case of raise up baby and find out what it is! Thanks. I love a good mystery.

Ahem. Now that I've stuck my foot in it - any pointers on caterpillar raising. I haven't tried it since boyhood and as I recall my results were less than stellar then. :)

… Steve Scott, 7 May, 2006 - 12:23pm

As it happens...

I wrote an article on that very subject in the Forums section here. Let me know if anything needs more explanation.

… Hannah Nendick-Mason, 7 May, 2006 - 12:48pm

Thanks

… Steve Scott, 7 May, 2006 - 12:53pm