When I looked out of my window this morning, I noticed something unusual. I’m on the fourth floor and below I could see something grey among the green on top of an ornamental tree.

I used my binoculars to zero in on it, and was surprised to see movement! There were orange caterpillars crawling all over a nest of some sort. Clearly, my knowledge of insects is limited, but I’m telling it as I see it.

After taking a few photos with my camera, I had errands to run and told myself I would take more, better, pictures when I got home. Sadly, only an hour later, the gardeners had removed the nest and the insects. The gardeners were also methodically searching nearby trees for similar invasions.

So, unfortunately, I was unable to improve on the pictures you see here. If you know what these caterpillars are and what they may one day evolve into (if the gardeners didn’t kill them), I will be very interested to know.

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Edit to add: These are tent caterpillars and this year there is an infestation. There is more information here.