Euthyatira pudens

The egg of this moth can be found in late April on the underside of a leaf of the dogwood Cornus stolonifera, usually placed just to one side of the central rib of the leaf. To my eye, the caterpillar bears a most remarkable resemblance to a sawfly larva. It is not just that it has two dark spots on the head, just like a sawfly larva, but the general shape of the caterpillar and its movements look uncannily like that of a sawfly. When I first saw a caterpillar of pudens I had to count the legs over and over again, and even then I was not sure that it was a moth. The pupa, however, is typically mothlike, and, like the related species Habrosyne scripta, the intersegmental abdominal rings are reddish in colour. The pupa overwinters, and the moth emerges in early April.