Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: Caterpillar Identification...Help!, 1 by TexasPuddyPrint

TexasPuddyPrint wrote:
Well, they aren't eating anything...and I've tossed a little bit of everything in the vicinity of where I found them. So far they are content to cling to the side of the cat cage...hopefully they will pupate.

Becky...those casings look like the pupa shell (?) of a hover fly. Well, they seem the same shape...but the ones out here are brownish in color. Hover flies love to chomp on aphids. I sat and watched one go from aphid to aphid sucking the juice of each. All that was left was a clear skin and those little black legs!!! :o)

~ Cat

Hmmmm...maybe these pink caterpillars are hover fly larvae...but the only ones I've seen here are green and always on the milkweed in search of aphids. Too late to do it now...but I'll drop some aphids on the cat cage tomorrow morning.

Here's a hover fly larva doing the aphid chomp! You can see the aphid carcasses too!