As you walk through the forest you will encounter a plethora of spiders and insects…if you only look for them. Butterflies flit about as they pass through the woods to and from prairies and patches of desired plants such as joe pye weed, a favorite of swallowtail butterflies. Inchworms (actually geometrid moth caterpillars) are often seen seeming to hang in midair but actually they throw themselves off a tree when a predator comes by. They hang by a silk thread until the danger has passed and then they climb back up and resume their meal of leaves.
If you watch carefully, you might spy a sphinx moth which looks like a moth but flies like a hummingbird. In these pine woods, there has even been spotted a wooly alder aphid which appears to be a floating bit of lint until it changes direction on its own!
