I noticed some shiny egg masses wrapped around the twigs of our biggest peach tree this winter, but I left them in place since I didn't know what they were.  Sunday, tiny tent caterpillar webs began radiating out from the egg masses.  Bad news!

If you live east of the Rockies, you've probably seen the tent caterpillar before, even though you may not have known what it is.  The caterpillars live inside a spiderweb-like tent of white silk that can reach about a foot in length, easily visible around the limbs of wild black cherries as you drive down the highway.  Tent caterpillars are voracious eaters and can defoliate entire trees in a season.

Although wild black cherries are their favorite food, tent caterpillars enjoy pretty much every fruit tree you'd plant in your yard.  They like apples, pears, cherries, plums, and peaches.  Large orchards spray chemicals to kill tent caterpillars, but on the backyard scale they're extremely easy to pick off the branch either in the egg stage or soon after the caterpillars hatch.  And our hens want you to know that a web full of tiny caterpillars is a very tasty treat.