Caterpillars can help those hungry birds

Re: “The Very Hungry Caterpillar is in your backyard,” column, June 4.

Although caterpillars aren’t actually important food for whales (as David Sovka amusingly suggests), they are hugely important for birds.

The best food for baby songbirds is caterpillars. They are critical for turning plants into birds. I wish Sovka had mentioned this in his piece about tent caterpillars.

Helpfully, other sources have been reassuring us that tent caterpillars are natural and we needn’t worry about them so much.

I read recently in this newspaper the comforting advice that if the tree is big enough that the tent caterpillars are out of reach, you don’t need to do anything. And if the tree is young and small, then maybe remove them by hand or with an acceptable spray.

I did exactly this on my two-yearold apple tree that I’m training as an espalier on a fence. Tent caterpillars appeared on a waist-high branch; how did they get so big before I noticed them, twitching in the sun the way they do?

I debated leaving them to encourage their natural predators to come eat them. But the tree is small so I sprayed them with a solution of Seventh Generation “dish liquid,” killing them immediately. Then they were really ugly, so I hosed them off. Easy.

The planned aerial spraying with Foray 48B (Btk), which kills all butterfly and moth caterpillars, is another matter. The product literature says “minimal environmental impact.”

Spraying the birds might not hurt them, but killing their food surely will. That’s not minimal impact; that’s destruction.

Ann Tiplady Victoria