In the last 3 days I have noticed a marked explosion in the gypsy moth population to almost a spooky point. The cars are covered with castings and the juvenile caterpillars are falling everywhere. Last evening around 8pm I could stand in one spot and hear the castings falling down like rain through the leaves. As I worked in the swamp yesterday I saw the regular flutter of leaf pieces floating down from above. All red oak.
What concerns me this time is that they seem to be attacking my red oaks. In the past they pretty much stayed in the Maples, but now it seems like the oaks are the target. Is anybody else seeing this? I hope this isn't one of those really epic bad years when they kill a lot of trees.
Oh, and for those FF members that may identify as being Gypsys and who are offended by the term "Gypsy Moth" I am sorry, no harm or insult intended. This is what we have called them for the 50 years I have known of them and it was never derogatory, still isn't. I will not call them " Sponge Moths". If I hurt your feelings, I'm sorry. Life's tough, get a helmet.
I can see that you are going to need some sensitivity training. There are several others here that could benefit too, but I am not calling any names WV Sawmiller.
We had them here last year.
Well, they never go away, just move from one area to another, which is a good thing.
Driving around I would see the oak tree with no leaves. But a mile down the road all is fine.
I have not had them on my land, yet. Not enough to take all the leaves off from 100 trees.
Brown tail months keep heading my way.
Danny, yo may be correct. I have a friend who is a certified dog trainer and pretty good at it. Maybe she could spend some time with me? As for Howard, he may need a little more help than that and he is on his own.
Ray, I just walked out to put the outgoing mail in the box and my entire driveway is covered with green leaf fragments, almost all red oak, but some maple. Now I don't care about the red maples, but the few sugars that I have I want to keep and I sure don't want to loose any RO's either! It's depressing.
Just hope they don't skip over to the evergreens. They will if there is nothing else. I had several white pine they killed in our late1980s outbreak.
I'm in my third year so this will be bad. I had a lot of Oak logged off last year because I was afraid I was going to lose them anyway. They are on my Apple trees as well and Yes, they took out some of my smaller White Pine last year >:( @Jeff (https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?action=profile;u=1)
This is our third year with them. the first two years they decimated the trees. The only saving grace was the wet year kept the trees alive. Hopefully this year they won't be as bad. My deer miss the acorns and I miss the leaves on the oaks.
They did run out of oaks the last couple years then moved to the maples and then pines. They were really bad.
In the early 80's we got hit 3 years in a row. Many big old white oak died. Most of the hemlock also and those that survived got killed by the woolly adelged [spelling]. We have almost no native pine so the hemlock was a big loss for the local use sawmill like me. Planted spruce is my main thing for barn boards.
We are going into year 3 here. Last year walking in the woods in July it felt like October. No leaf canopy at all.
Here their preference seems to be fruit trees, oak, poplar, and then spruce/pine. They ignored all the ash trees (left them to the EAB) and beech (beech bark disease) and only started on the red and sugar maples when nothing was left. I heard that maple leaves - sugar especially - have a toxin or similar that discourages the moths.
Our municipality is aerial spraying BTK this year on their lands and private lands where landowners sign up (pay).
Most of our trees survived and leafed out again later in the year. Spruce seemed to be worst hit. Once all the top needles were stripped, they didn't recover. I have number where to top 20' are dead
3 years is not good. 1 or 2 years in the hardwoods, not so bad and 1 year on conifer and they die.
I live on a dirt road and at the other end about 2 miles north, it looks like there have been flurries of green snow; a little windrow of leaf pieces on each side of the travel area.
This is the second year in this area but they seem to be in new places that weren't et up last year.
Have never had them this far north. But we have had the forest tent caterpillar that ate any deciduous tree it came to, back in the 1980's. During that time I did see the gypsy moth in Exitor, NH. White pine and oak country. Forest tent caterpillar was especially bad in aspen, seems to prefer it. It's funny, the larvae don't actually make tents. :D They ruined our old 'New Brunswicker' variety apples in great grand father's orchard here. Pretty much killed them. The variety was started by Francis Peabody Sharp in Woodstock, NB. He was the father-in-law of Tappen Adney, who wrote the account of the 'Klondike Stampede'.
Yeah, I just walked through an 80% defoliated oak stand in Maine yesterday. Never seen them this bad here. Must just be a bad year for them. Not a huge deal. Its a naturalized species at this point so not a big deal. These things come in waves.
Happy to report that the caterpillar population here seems to have crashed. Talking to a forester friend last week and it seems to be the same all around the area.
We had quite a few for a week or so, and very few since. Our trees will appreciate it!! If we had had another year like that last 2, there likely would have been lots of mortality.
The entire state of Virginia has a quarantine on moving firewood due to the gypsy/spongy moth. I live in the central Shenandoah Valley area and there are National Forests on both mountain ranges, so they stay after it. They did a controlled burn for some beetles last season. I have mostly oak on my 8 acres. I don't see many caterpillars and I have a lot of birds around, especially woodpeckers so maybe they pick them up.
Well the little !@#$%^ are in the stage where the caterpillars are or have died. Just lots of carcasses littering the ground. BUT they have decimated my red oaks, all of them. They started on my one white oak just as they started dying off. But they clobbered the top pretty well. Not happy with this years 'crop'. I am hoping the trees can rebound, but I think they nailed my biggest for the last time.
Some call them gypsy moths, some call them sponge moths, I have a different name I won't type out here, but you can guess.
old greenhorn, make sure you water those trees. it will help keep them alive. We had the same thing happen here to the point the trees were completely bare. finally had all the caterpillars die off and the tree look as good as new this year.