Tent caterpillar eggs

Today's nature calendar task:

Place a twig bearing tent caterpillar eggs in water.

I don't know how to do today's task. I only know what the adult, summer tent caterpillar webs look like. I'm not sure that we have tent caterpillars in our area. This is one of those tasks where you return to the tree that had been covered in tent caterpillars last fall, and look for the eggs.

A few minutes of internet research has turned up a few sites. I should be looking for the eastern tent caterpillar. Wikipedia had a good article, and the University of Kentucky entomology department also has a good article. They have pictures of the egg mass.

So, I'm looking for a black, oval mass around a twig on a wild cherry or a crabapple tree. At this point, I don't think I can identify a wild cherry without its leaves, but I do know where there is an abandoned apple orchard. Perhaps we'll look there today. I wonder if I could find the remnants of one of last year's webs, and look in that area.

One of my summer jobs was at a park that had lots of fall webworms. Tons of people would show up at the visitor centre asking about the tent caterpillars and I would have to explain endlessly that they were actually harmless fall webworms. I wish I had learned more.

I love how these nature calendar tasks lead you in all different directions. It is really expanding my nature knowledge, and I consider myself fairly nature savvy. The kids are also following rabbit trails of their own.