9 June 2015
Who eats tentworms?
Yellow-billed and black-billed cuckoos do. They’re fond of caterpillars, katydids, grasshoppers, and crickets and are happy to rid your trees of tent caterpillars and gypsy moths.
Bobby Greene captured this yellow-billed cuckoo in the act.
Sadly, our use of pesticides — which reduces their food source — has contributed to rapid declines in both species during the last century. Yellow-billed cuckoos used to be found across the continent. They are nearly extirpated from the West.
p.s. We saw a yellow-billed cuckoo at the edge of Chatham Village during the Emerald View BioBlitz. They’re in the City in wooded habitats.
I was upset to see someone near where I work up on a ladder spraying pesticide on a tentworm nest in a crab apple tree. I can only hope that birds would know not to go near the nest of dead caterpillars. If it really bothered the man, it would have been just as easy to cut the nest down.
I love cuckoos! They are so cool! We have Black Billed Cuckoos that live on our property.
The tent caterpillar cycle is beginning again here in Western Washington – I wish these birds were in our area! It’ll be a rough 3 years before natural preditors come in.