Fine, dusty webbing on leaf undersides and at stem junctions, with the leaf surface finely stippled pale, is spider mites. Coarse, dense webbing binding whole shoots or leaves into a shelter, with chewed leaf tissue and frass, is caterpillars. Tap the foliage over a sheet of white paper: mites appear as slowly moving specks, caterpillars are visible without help. The two need entirely different responses, and one of them often needs none.

• Stippled leaves plus fine webbing: mites. The webbing is incidental to sap feeding.
• Chewed leaves plus coarse webbing: caterpillars, building a shelter.
• Mites thrive in hot, dry, dusty conditions, which is often the actual cause.

Webbing on a plant reads as a spider problem to most people and almost never is. Two quite different animals produce it, and the leaf tells you which within a few seconds. The pest evidence chart covers the other traces that get read the same way.

Spider mites

The webbing. Very fine, and it looks dusty rather than structural. It concentrates on leaf undersides, in the angles where leaf meets stem, and over growing tips. In a heavy infestation it can cover a whole shoot in a hazy film.

The leaf. This is the diagnosis. Sap-feeding mites empty individual cells, producing a fine pale stippling across the leaf surface, like the faintest possible spray of dots. As it progresses the leaf goes bronze or grey, then dries and drops. The stippling is visible before the webbing is.

The animals. Under 0.5 mm, so effectively invisible individually. The way to confirm is to hold a sheet of white paper under a leaf and tap the stem: mites fall onto it and can be seen moving slowly.

Conditions. Spider mites thrive in hot, dry, dusty conditions, and outbreaks are frequently a symptom of those rather than an invasion. Plants under water stress, plants beside a dusty path, and houseplants next to a radiator are the classic cases. Broad-spectrum insecticide makes it worse rather than better, because it kills the predatory mites and small beetles that normally hold the population down.

UC IPM’s guide to aphids covers the neighbouring sap-feeding group, whose sticky honeydew is a different but often co-occurring finding.

Caterpillars

The webbing. Coarse, dense and structural. It binds leaves together, encloses the tip of a shoot, or forms a visible tent in a branch fork. You can see individual strands.

The leaf. Chewed. Holes, missing edges, or leaves skeletonised down to the veins, with green or dark frass pellets caught in the webbing and on the foliage below.

The animals. Visible without help, inside the shelter. Opening a tied leaf or a tent finds them.

Common cases. Web-forming caterpillars of several families make communal tents in trees and shrubs. Leaf rollers tie individual leaves with silk and feed inside. Both are conspicuous and both are seasonal.

Caterpillar frass in the garden covers reading the pellets, which fall straight down and so locate the feeder, and types of caterpillars covers the animals.

The comparison

What else spins on a plant

Actual spiders, which build a recognisable web with a pattern and are catching insects rather than eating the plant. They are beneficial and should be left. Funnel webs compared with sheet and orb webs covers telling a real web from these two.

Ermine moth larvae, which in some years cover an entire hedge or small tree in dense silk. Spectacular, alarming, and the plant almost always recovers fully.

Woolly aphids and mealybugs, which produce white waxy fluff rather than webbing. It looks superficially similar and pulls apart differently: wax crumbles, silk stretches.

What to do

For mites, address the conditions first. Water the plant properly. Hose the foliage, undersides included, with a firm spray of water, and repeat every few days; this alone knocks populations down substantially and washes off the dust they favour. Keep foliage clear of dust. Avoid broad-spectrum insecticide entirely, since it removes the natural enemies and mite populations rebound faster than predators do. On houseplants, raising humidity and wiping leaves is usually sufficient.

For caterpillars, decide whether it matters. On an established tree or shrub, defoliation of a few branches is cosmetic and the plant will regrow. Prune out a tent or a bound shoot and dispose of it, which is quick and complete. On a food crop or a young tree, hand removal at night is effective, and the frass will have told you where to look.

Both cases sit squarely within the EPA’s point about whether a pesticide is needed at all: the mite case is often made worse by spraying, and the caterpillar case is usually solved with secateurs.

One exception on handling: some hairy caterpillars, including processionary species in parts of Europe, carry irritant hairs and are a genuine health matter. Do not handle a hairy communal nest, and in regions where those occur, do not attempt removal yourself.

Common questions

The webbing appeared in a heatwave. Consistent with mites, which build up fast in hot dry weather.

It is on a houseplant next to a radiator. The classic spider mite situation. Move the plant, raise humidity, and wash the leaves.

Whole hedge covered in silk. Usually ermine moth larvae. Unsightly for a few weeks and rarely harmful.

Can I tell without a magnifier? Yes. The stippling on the leaf and the white-paper tap test are both enough.

The bottom line

Look at the leaf, not the webbing. Fine pale stippling means mites and usually means the plant is hot, dry and dusty. Chewing and frass mean caterpillars and usually mean secateurs. And in both cases reaching for a broad-spectrum spray is the response most likely to make next month worse.

The post Webbing on Garden Plants: Mites or Caterpillars appeared first on InsectoGuide.

Silk in dry food is a pantry moth larva, most often the Indian meal moth. The webbing binds grains into clumps and forms a fine mat over the surface of the product, and it is spun as the larva feeds. When the larva is ready to pupate it leaves the food and crawls upward and outward, so cocoons turn up on the underside of the shelf above, in cupboard corners and on ceilings, often at a surprising distance from the source packet.

• Clumped grains mean silk, and silk in food means a larva, not damp.
• The cocoon is never at the source. Look up and outward from the packet.
• They chew out of sealed packets, so the infestation usually arrived with the food.

Silk in a food packet is unambiguous. Nothing else in a kitchen produces it, and once you have seen clumped, bound grains you will not mistake anything else for them. The useful part of this page is what happens next, because the search extends well beyond the packet.

What the webbing looks like

Clumping. Grains, flour, cereal or dried fruit stuck together in loose masses. Tipped out, the product does not flow freely.

A surface mat. A fine, gauzy layer over the top of the contents, sometimes only visible when the packet is opened and tilted to the light.

Threads in the folds. Silk at the top of a bag, in the seam, and around the closure.

Frass mixed in. Fine pale granular material bound up in the silk. It is the larva’s droppings, and it is what makes an infested product look slightly dirty as well as clumped.

The larvae themselves. Small, cream to pinkish, up to about 12 mm, with a darker head. Often fewer of them than the damage suggests.

The clothes moths guidance from the University of Kentucky covers the fabric-feeding relatives; the pantry species behave the same way with silk but eat stored food instead.

Where the cocoons end up

This is the part that surprises people and the reason a cleaned cupboard reinfests.

When a larva finishes feeding it leaves the food entirely and crawls upward and away to find somewhere to pupate. In a kitchen that means:

– the underside of the shelf above the packet
– the top corners of the cupboard, where the carcass meets the wall
– shelf-support holes and hinge recesses
– along the ceiling of the cupboard
– out of the cupboard altogether, onto the room ceiling, cornices and the tops of door frames

So finding cocoons a metre or more from any food is normal and does not indicate a second infestation. It also means that discarding the infested packet is not the end of the job: the next generation is already elsewhere in the room. Our page on bugs crawling on the ceiling covers the same behaviour from the other direction.

A cocoon is a small silk case, sometimes incorporating debris, and it is easy to miss against a wooden shelf.

Where it came from

Almost always with the food. Eggs or small larvae are present in the product when it is packed, and the infestation develops in the cupboard afterwards.

The supporting evidence for that is the packaging itself: pantry moth larvae and several stored-product beetles chew out through paper, card and thin plastic film, so pinholes in an otherwise sealed packet mean the insect started inside. Damaged food packaging covers how to read that.

Two consequences worth being clear about. It is not a sign of an unclean kitchen. And cleaning alone will not prevent a recurrence, because the next infested packet will arrive the same way.

The reservoirs most often missed: birdseed, pet food, dried decorative items such as ornamental corn or pot pourri, spices, and anything at the back of a cupboard that has been there more than a year.

What is not moth webbing

Damp clumping. Flour and sugar cake together with moisture, with no threads and no frass. Pull it apart: silk holds, damp clumps crumble.

Spider silk. In a cupboard rather than in the food, and structural rather than matted into the product.

Beetle infestation. Grain and flour beetles produce fine dust and live insects but no webbing. That distinction separates the two main pantry groups at a glance. Tiny bugs in kitchen cabinets covers both.

Silk tubes and tunnels indoors covers the other silk-producing larvae found in a house.

Clearing it out

There is no useful chemical shortcut here, and the EPA’s point about whether a pesticide is needed at all applies squarely: this is a search and a storage problem.

Empty the cupboard completely onto the worktop. Every packet, jar and tin.

Check each item over a white surface. Open anything previously opened. Look for clumping, silk, pinholes and live larvae.

Discard what is infested, bagged, into an outside bin. Freeze anything you want to keep and are unsure about for a fortnight, which kills all stages.

Vacuum the empty cupboard, and specifically the shelf-support holes, hinge recesses, the joint between shelf and carcass, and the top corners. This is where the pupae are and it is the step that gets skipped.

Check outside the cupboard: the ceiling above, the cornice, the tops of door frames in the room.

Wipe with detergent, then decant everything dry into glass or rigid plastic with a real seal.

Pheromone traps are worth adding afterwards, not as a control but as a monitor: they catch adult males and tell you whether anything is still emerging. Continuing catches after a thorough clearance mean a packet was missed.

Common questions

Is the food safe if I sieve it? Not harmful in the way people fear, but the product also contains frass, cast skins and silk. Most people discard it, which is reasonable.

I see moths flying in the living room. Pantry moths fly well away from the kitchen. Check the kitchen anyway, because that is where they came from. Bugs that look like moths covers telling them from clothes moths.

It came back after six weeks. A missed packet, or pupae left in a crevice. Both are common, and the trap catch will tell you which.

How long has this been going on? A generation takes roughly a month to two months depending on temperature, so cocoons on the ceiling suggest at least one completed cycle.

The bottom line

Clumped grains bound with silk means a pantry moth larva, and it very probably came in with the packet. Empty the cupboard, check every item over white paper, and vacuum the crevices, then look upward and outward for the cocoons, because the larvae have already left the food and the next generation is not where you are looking.

The post Moth Webbing in a Pantry: Silk in the Food appeared first on InsectoGuide.

The shape names the culprit. Neat semicircles cut from the leaf margin are leafcutter bees, which are harmless. Ragged holes with green pellets below are caterpillars or sawfly larvae. Many small round shot holes are flea beetles. Veins left as lace is skeletonising, usually beetle larvae feeding in groups. Irregular holes with a silvery slime trail are slugs or snails. Pale winding tracks inside the leaf are leaf miners, and no hole is involved at all.

• Look at the edge of the damage. Clean cuts, ragged tears and rasped patches are different mouthparts.
• Frass below points straight up at whatever made it.
• Most of this needs no action. Established plants tolerate heavy leaf loss.

Leaf damage is usually discovered after the animal has left, and searching the plant in daylight is the least efficient way to identify it. The damage itself is more informative, because different mouthparts leave different edges.

Working from the shape

Neat semicircular or oval pieces cut from the leaf margin. Leafcutter bees. The cuts are startlingly clean, as though made with a punch, and they are taken from the edge inward. The bee uses the pieces to line a nest cell. This causes no meaningful harm to the plant and the bee is a valuable pollinator, so the correct response is to leave it entirely alone. Roses, wisteria and redbud are frequent targets.

Ragged, irregular holes in the leaf blade, with green or dark pellets below. Caterpillars or sawfly larvae. The pellets are the confirmation and the locator, since frass falls straight down. Caterpillar frass in the garden covers reading it, and types of caterpillars covers the animals. To tell the two groups apart, count the fleshy prolegs along the abdomen: five pairs or fewer means a caterpillar, six or more means a sawfly.

Many small round holes, as though the leaf had been peppered with shot. Flea beetles. Small, dark, and they jump when disturbed, which is where the name comes from. Damage concentrates on seedlings and on brassicas, and it matters on young plants and rarely on established ones.

The leaf reduced to a lace of veins. Skeletonising. Young beetle larvae and some sawfly larvae feed in groups on one leaf surface, leaving the vein network and the opposite epidermis. Patches of it on adjacent leaves indicate a group feeding rather than a wandering individual.

Irregular holes with a silvery dried trail nearby, worse after rain. Slugs and snails. They rasp rather than bite, so edges are smoother and the damage often starts within the leaf rather than at the margin. Feeding is nocturnal, so a torch at night confirms it.

A pale winding tunnel within the leaf, with no hole at all. Leaf miners. The larva feeds between the upper and lower surfaces. Squeezing the end of the track will often find it.

Stippled pale dots rather than holes, sometimes with fine webbing on the underside. Not chewing at all: sap feeders such as spider mites and thrips. The response is different, and UC IPM’s guide to aphids covers the neighbouring sap-feeding group and the sticky honeydew that goes with it. See also types of aphids.

Look at night

This is the single most useful piece of practical advice on the subject. A large share of leaf feeders, including most slugs, many caterpillars and several beetles, feed after dark and hide by day in leaf litter, under pots, in stem junctions or in the soil.

Take a torch out at around ten in the evening and look at the plants that are being damaged. The animals will be on them. This is faster and more conclusive than any amount of daytime searching, and it takes five minutes.

Where to look in daylight

If night is not practical: leaf undersides first, then stem junctions and leaf axils, then the growing tip, then the top few centimetres of soil and under the pot rim. Rolled or tied leaves should be opened, since several species feed inside them.

For houseplants the same applies, and what lives in houseplant soil covers the pot side of it.

What is not an insect

Several things produce holes and are not eaten at all.

Fungal leaf spot kills tissue that then falls out, leaving a hole with a discoloured ring or a distinct border around it. Insect damage has no such margin.

Hail and physical damage produce tears and holes concentrated on upper surfaces and on exposed plants, with no pattern relating to leaf structure.

Chemical scorch from spray drift or fertiliser produces browning and holes in the affected zone only.

If the hole has a coloured or dead border, suspect disease rather than an animal.

Deciding whether to act

Most leaf damage in a garden is cosmetic and needs nothing. A plant can lose a substantial fraction of its leaf area and recover completely. Three questions decide it.

Is the plant young or established? Seedlings and newly planted stock can be killed by damage an established plant would shrug off. Flea beetle damage on brassica seedlings is worth acting on; the same damage on a mature plant is not.

Is the damaged part the crop? Holes in the leaves of a fruit tree matter far less than holes in salad leaves.

Is it spreading fast? A group of skeletonising larvae can defoliate a small shrub in days, where a single caterpillar will not.

Where action is warranted, hand removal at night is the most effective and the least damaging option, and the frass has already narrowed where to look. Broad-spectrum insecticide is the poor choice: it removes the parasitic wasps, ground beetles and predatory bugs that keep these populations down, and the pests recover faster than their predators. That is precisely the calculation the EPA sets out in its guidance on whether a pesticide is needed at all.

Common questions

Something is eating my hosta to shreds. Slugs, almost certainly, and a torch at night will prove it in one visit.

The holes appeared overnight. Consistent with nocturnal feeding, and with slugs in particular.

Only the new growth is affected. Suggests a sap feeder or a flea beetle rather than a caterpillar, both of which favour tender tissue.

Is it worth identifying precisely? Only if you intend to intervene. If the plant is established and the damage is cosmetic, the identification is interest rather than necessity.

The bottom line

Read the edge of the hole, look for frass below it, and go out with a torch at night. Those three steps identify almost all leaf damage. Then be slow to act, because on an established plant most of this resolves itself, and the semicircles cut from your rose leaves are the work of a bee you want to keep.

The post Holes in Leaves: Reading Garden Damage appeared first on InsectoGuide.

Clothes moths graze. The damage starts as a thinned, bald patch where surface fibres have been eaten away and only becomes a hole later, and there is usually fine silk webbing with it. Carpet beetles cut: several cleaner, scattered holes, no webbing, and shed bristly larval skins nearby instead. In both cases the damage concentrates where the garment was soiled, and in both cases the larva does the eating while the adult does not.

• Webbing means moth. Shed skins mean beetle. That is the fastest single test.
• Grazed patches versus scattered clean holes is the pattern difference.
• Damage follows soiling. Cuffs, collars and anywhere food or sweat reached the fibre.

Two insects account for essentially all damage to wool, cashmere, silk and other animal fibres in a house. Telling them apart is worth the two minutes because the search that follows differs, though the treatment overlaps considerably.

One point applies to both and is worth stating first: the adult does not eat fabric. Adult clothes moths have no functional feeding mouthparts, and adult carpet beetles feed on pollen outdoors. The damage is done entirely by larvae. Killing the moth you saw on the landing changes nothing.

Clothes moths

The damage. Irregular, grazed areas rather than punched holes. Surface fibres are eaten away first, producing a thinned, bald-looking patch. Held up to a window, the fabric shows as a translucent area before any hole exists. Holes come later, and they are irregular in outline.

Webbing. The webbing clothes moth spins fine silk as it feeds, so look for gossamer threads across the fabric surface, small silken tubes, or grains of frass caught in silk. The casemaking species carries a small portable case, which looks like a grain of the fabric itself and moves.

The larva. Creamy white, roughly 10 mm when full grown, with a darker head. It avoids light and will be found in folds and undersides.

Where. Undisturbed, dark places: the back of a wardrobe, the bottom of a drawer, under a collar, inside a fold, beneath furniture on a wool rug, and in the fibre and lint that gathers on a wardrobe floor.

The University of Kentucky’s guide to clothes moths covers the two species and the life cycle.

Carpet beetles

The damage. Cleaner-edged holes, often several scattered across an area rather than one grazed patch. On a carpet, wear appears as thinned patches along edges and under furniture.

Shed skins. This is the diagnostic finding, and it is more often noticed than the larva. Carpet beetle larvae moult repeatedly and leave behind bristly, brown, hollow cast skins that look like the larva itself. Finding shed skins with no live larvae is entirely normal.

The larva. Short, stout, densely bristly, brown to golden, and it moves slowly. Very different in appearance from the smooth pale moth larva.

Where. Wider ranging than moths, because the diet is broader: wool, feathers, hair, dried insect remains, and dust containing all three. So carpet beetles turn up along skirting boards, under carpet edges, in air vents, in old bird nests in the eaves, and in accumulated dust as readily as in a wardrobe.

UC IPM’s guide to carpet beetles covers the species. Our page on carpet beetle larvae covers what to look for, and clothes moth larvae does the same on the moth side.

The comparison, in one place

What both have in common

They eat where the garment is dirty. Perspiration, body oils, food residue and urine all make fibre more attractive and more digestible. This is why damage clusters at cuffs, collars, underarms and hems rather than distributing evenly, and it is why a clean garment stored clean is far less likely to be attacked than a worn one.

They avoid disturbance. Things worn and washed regularly are rarely damaged. Things stored for a season are.

The source is often not the garment. A persistent problem in one room can trace to an old bird nest in the eaves, a wool rug underlay, felt in a piano, or the accumulated fibre under a heavy piece of furniture. Bird droppings and nest signs covers the nest route, which is the one most often missed.

What to do

Clean before storing. This is the single most effective measure and it costs nothing extra.

Heat or freeze what is already affected. A hot wash and tumble dry kills all life stages where the fabric allows. Where it does not, a fortnight in a domestic freezer, sealed in a bag, works. The University of Kentucky covers the parameters under thermal deinfestation of household items.

Vacuum the space, not just the garment. Wardrobe floors, skirting junctions, under furniture, carpet edges. Then empty the vacuum outside.

Store sealed. Zip bags or lidded boxes, with the garment clean going in. Cedar and lavender have a modest repellent effect at best and do not kill an established infestation, so they are a supplement rather than a measure.

Tiny bugs in a wardrobe covers the search, and the pest damage chart places fabric damage against the other materials.

Common questions

Holes in cotton or synthetic fabric. Neither insect eats plant or synthetic fibre. Damage there is usually mechanical, chemical, or the result of a blend containing some wool. A garment heavily soiled with food can be grazed regardless of fibre.

One hole only. Very often not an insect at all. Snags, moth-shaped wear at a fold, and acid marks all produce single holes.

I see moths flying but no damage. Check the species. Pantry moths fly in living space and come from the kitchen, and are far commoner than clothes moths on the wing. Bugs that look like moths covers the distinction.

How long has it been going on? A larval stage of several months is normal, and can extend far longer in cool conditions, so damage found now may have started last year.

The bottom line

Look for webbing and for cast skins before looking at the holes. Webbing means moth, bristly shed skins mean beetle, and the two searches then diverge: wardrobe folds for one, skirting boards and dust for the other. Then clean everything before it goes back, because soiling is what made the garment worth eating in the first place.

The post Holes in Clothes: Moth or Carpet Beetle appeared first on InsectoGuide.

Caterpillar frass is a small barrel-shaped pellet with ridges running along it, green when the feeding is fresh and darkening to brown or black as it dries. It falls straight down, so it is a locator: whatever produced it is on the plant directly above, usually on a leaf underside or tucked into a stem junction. Pellet size scales with the caterpillar, so a 4 mm pellet means something substantial and a 1 mm pellet means something you will struggle to see.

• Look up from the pellet, not around it. Frass falls vertically.
• Size estimates the feeder. Big pellets, big caterpillar, and not far away.
• Ridged and barrel shaped separates it from soil, seed and bird droppings.

Caterpillars are unusually good at not being seen. They rest on leaf undersides, match the plant, and in many species feed at night. The frass does not hide, and once you know what it means it is a faster route to the animal than searching the foliage.

What it looks like

Shape. Roughly cylindrical or barrel shaped with longitudinal ridges or grooves, giving a faceted look at close range. The ends are flat rather than pointed.

Size. From under 1 mm for a newly hatched larva to 5 mm or more for a large hawkmoth caterpillar. Size is proportional to the animal, and it increases visibly as a caterpillar grows through its instars, so a scatter of mixed sizes means it has been feeding there for a while.

Colour. Green when fresh, because it is essentially compressed leaf, and browning to near black within a day or two. Bright green pellets mean feeding within the last day.

Quantity. Larger than people expect. A single large caterpillar produces a conspicuous amount, which is why a heavy scatter does not necessarily mean many animals.

Reading the position

The rule is simple: frass falls straight down. Whatever produced it was directly above where it landed.

On a shrub, pellets caught on a lower leaf point at the leaf immediately above. On a tree, frass on a path or a patio table beneath the canopy indicates feeding overhead, and a steady accumulation on paving over several days indicates a substantial population.

Indoors on a houseplant, frass on the pot rim or on the surface of the compost is the same signal, and the same instruction: look at the undersides of the leaves above it.

The search itself: leaf undersides first, then stem junctions and leaf axils, then the growing tip, then rolled or tied leaves. Many species tie leaves together with silk and feed inside, so a leaf that will not unfold is worth opening. If the plant is a houseplant and there is no caterpillar to be found, what lives in houseplant soil covers what else produces debris on a pot surface.

What it is not

Bird droppings. No pellet shape, chalky white component, splashed rather than dropped as discrete units. Worth mentioning because several caterpillar species mimic bird droppings deliberately, so the confusion runs in both directions.

Aphid honeydew. Sticky, clear to amber, and it coats rather than falls as particles. Often followed by black sooty mould growing on the residue. That is a completely different problem, covered by UC IPM’s guide to aphids, and by our page on types of aphids.

Slug and snail droppings. Longer, thinner, more sinuous, often with a slime trail nearby.

Soil, seed cases and spent flower parts. Irregular, which the uniformity test catches. The droppings chart covers the wider comparison.

Sawfly larvae produce very similar frass and look like caterpillars. Count the fleshy prolegs on the abdomen: caterpillars have five pairs or fewer, sawfly larvae have six or more. It matters because they are not moths and are not affected by the same biological controls.

What the damage says alongside it

Frass tells you something is feeding. The leaf damage narrows what.

Large irregular holes and chewed leaf edges with frass below: a caterpillar or a sawfly larva.

Skeletonised leaves, veins left as a lace: often young larvae feeding in groups.

A leaf mine, a pale winding track within the leaf: a leaf-mining larva, and the frass is inside the mine rather than below it.

Rolled or tied leaves with frass inside: a leaf-roller.

Holes in leaves covers the full set, and types of caterpillars covers the animals themselves.

What to do, which is often nothing

Most caterpillar feeding on an established garden plant is cosmetic. Plants tolerate substantial leaf loss without harm, and the caterpillars are the larval stage of moths and butterflies that most gardeners want. Removing them by hand where they are genuinely damaging a crop, and leaving them where they are not, is the proportionate response, and it is the spirit of the EPA’s point about whether a pesticide is needed at all.

Where intervention is warranted, on vegetables or on a young tree that cannot afford defoliation, hand removal is effective because the frass has already told you where to look. Broad-spectrum insecticide is the poor choice here: it removes the parasitic wasps and predatory beetles that are the main natural control, and caterpillar populations rebound faster than their predators do.

One case is different. Some species carry irritant hairs, and in parts of Europe processionary moth caterpillars in oak and pine are a genuine health matter and a notifiable one in some regions. Do not handle a hairy caterpillar in a communal nest with bare hands, and do not attempt to remove such a nest yourself.

Common questions

How fresh is it? Bright green means within about a day. Brown or black means older, though frass persists for a long time in dry weather.

There is frass but no caterpillar anywhere. Check at night with a torch. A large share of species feed nocturnally and rest lower down or in leaf litter by day.

Frass on a windowsill indoors. Usually a caterpillar that came in on cut flowers or on a plant, or occasionally a pantry moth larva that has wandered. Insect larvae in the house covers the indoor set.

Is the plant going to survive? Almost always. Established plants regrow after complete defoliation more often than not.

The bottom line

Ridged barrel-shaped pellets, green when fresh, mean a caterpillar directly above. Use the size to estimate how large it is, look at leaf undersides and stem junctions rather than at the tops of leaves, and then decide whether it needs doing anything about. On an ornamental plant in a garden, the honest answer is usually that it does not.

The post Caterpillar Frass: Green Pellets Under a Plant appeared first on InsectoGuide.

Sorting caterpillars by which butterfly or moth they become is interesting and rarely useful. Sorting by what they are eating and what the damage looks like tells you what to do. Four groups cover almost everything: brassica feeders, tomato and pepper feeders, stem and root cutters, and the small group with stinging hairs that are worth recognising and not touching.

• Ragged holes in cabbage and kale: cabbage white or cabbage looper.
• A branch stripped bare overnight on a tomato: hornworm, large and easy to hand-pick.
• Conspicuously hairy or spiny: do not handle. A few cause a genuine sting.

Most caterpillar identification guides start from the adult, which is backwards for anyone standing over a chewed plant. The plant and the damage pattern narrow it faster, and they also decide the response.

Sorted by what they are eating

The brassica group

If holes are appearing in cabbage, kale, broccoli or rocket, the candidates are few.

Cabbage white caterpillars are the classic: green or green-and-yellow, velvety, feeding openly on the leaf. Cabbage loopers move by arching their backs into a loop, which is a diagnostic worth knowing because it separates them at a glance. Diamondback moth larvae are smaller, thinner and wriggle violently when disturbed, often dropping on a silk thread.

All three are handled the same way, and the useful point is timing rather than treatment: netting put on before the butterflies arrive works, and netting put on after they have laid does not. Our guide to protecting brassicas covers the method, and the netting guide covers the material, which needs to be fine enough and sealed at the soil.

Hornworms, which look worse than they are

Tomato and tobacco hornworms are large, green, with diagonal stripes and a soft horn at the rear. They are the single most alarming caterpillar most gardeners meet and among the easiest to deal with.

The damage is unmistakable: a branch stripped to bare stems overnight, with dark pellets of frass on the leaves below. The frass is usually how people find them, because the caterpillar itself is well camouflaged.

They are big enough to hand-pick, which is the whole treatment for a domestic garden.

One thing worth knowing before you remove one: if it is covered in what look like small white grains of rice, leave it. Those are the cocoons of a parasitoid wasp that has already killed it, and letting them hatch puts more of those wasps in your garden. Our hornworm guide covers it.

Cutworms, which work at night

Smooth, dull grey-brown, and they curl into a tight C when disturbed. They feed at night at soil level and hide just under the surface by day.

The damage is distinctive and infuriating: a seedling cut clean through at the base and left lying, rather than eaten. A row of transplants lost overnight with no visible insect is a cutworm.

The fix is physical. A collar of card or a plastic sleeve pushed a couple of centimetres into the soil around each transplant stops them, and it costs nothing. UC IPM’s guidance on lawn and soil insects covers the wider group living at that level, and our grub guide covers the C-shaped larvae that get confused with them.

The stinging group, which is short and worth knowing

Most caterpillars are harmless to handle. A small number are not, and the rule that covers nearly all of them is simple: conspicuously hairy, spiny or tufted means do not touch.

The mechanism is not a sting in the wasp sense. The hairs are hollow and break off in skin, delivering an irritant. The result ranges from an itchy rash to genuinely severe pain depending on species.

Species worth recognising by region include the puss caterpillar, saddleback, io moth larva and browntail moth larva. Hairs can also become airborne around heavy infestations, causing a rash without any contact at all.

If contact happens: lift the hairs out with tape rather than rubbing, wash the area, and treat as an irritant reaction. MedlinePlus notes that most insect reactions are local and resolve on their own, but a spreading reaction, difficulty breathing or severe pain is a reason to seek medical help promptly. Our bite and sting chart covers reading a skin reaction, and this page describes patterns rather than giving medical advice.

The ones to leave alone

Worth stating, because reflexive removal costs more than it saves.

Swallowtail caterpillars on fennel, dill, parsley and carrot tops are conspicuous and harmless to a home garden in the numbers that occur. Monarch caterpillars on milkweed are the reason people plant milkweed.

Anything already parasitised, as above.

And caterpillars generally are what a great deal of garden wildlife lives on. Our guide to beneficial insects covers the predators that arrive when there is something to eat, and our guide to what wasp larvae eat covers one of the more effective ones.

Common questions

How do I know what it turns into?
Usually you do not need to. The plant it is on and the damage pattern decide the response, and the adult is a matter of curiosity.

It looped as it walked.
That is a looper or inchworm, which has fewer prolegs than a typical caterpillar and moves by arching. Cabbage looper is the common garden one.

Should I spray?
For a home garden, rarely. Hand-picking works for the large ones, netting works for the brassica group, and collars work for cutworms. Our integrated pest management guide covers thresholds, which is the part that decides whether anything is needed at all.

Final verdict

Identify by the plant and the damage rather than by the caterpillar. Ragged holes in brassicas means netting, and netting only helps if it goes on before the butterflies do. A tomato branch stripped overnight with frass below means a hornworm you can pick off by hand, unless it is already carrying wasp cocoons, in which case leave it. Seedlings cut at the base means cutworms and a card collar. And anything conspicuously hairy or spiny is the one group not to handle at all.

The post Types of Caterpillars: Garden Pests and the Stingers appeared first on InsectoGuide.

A fat white C-shaped grub with three pairs of legs at the front and a brown head is a beetle larva, and under turf it is almost always a chafer or a Japanese beetle. Not every grub is a problem: several soil dwellers look similar and eat decaying matter rather than roots. The threshold matters more than the species, because a healthy lawn tolerates a surprising number.

• C-shaped, white, legs at the front: a beetle larva, and it is eating roots if it is under turf.
• Turf that lifts like a carpet: the roots are gone, which is the damage worth acting on.
• A few grubs in a spadeful is normal. Treating on sight rather than on a count wastes money.

Digging a border or lifting turf turns up white grubs regularly, and most of the time nothing needs doing. The useful questions are what it is, whether it is eating roots, and whether there are enough of them to matter.

What a lawn grub looks like

C-shaped at rest, which is the most recognisable feature. Plump, soft, dirty white to cream, with a distinctly darker brown head capsule and three pairs of true legs clustered at the front end. The rear of the abdomen often looks darker because the gut contents show through.

Sizes range from a few millimetres in a first-year larva to over two centimetres in a mature chafer.

The legs at the front are the check that separates them from fly larvae, which have none, and our larvae hub covers the wider group.

Which beetle it becomes

Distinguishing them precisely means examining the raster, the pattern of tiny hairs on the underside of the tail end, which is a job for a hand lens and mostly of academic interest to a gardener. What matters more is depth and season.

Japanese beetle larvae sit in the top few centimetres under turf and feed on grass roots. The adults are metallic green and copper and skeletonise leaves above ground, which is often how people discover them.

European and masked chafer larvae behave similarly and are the commonest cause of turf damage in many regions.

May and June beetle larvae are larger and take two to three years to develop, so they can be found deeper and at a wider range of sizes.

UC IPM’s guidance on lawn insects covers the group and, more usefully, the thresholds.

The grubs that are not a problem

Several things in soil look similar and are doing no harm at all, and killing them is a waste.

Rose chafer and stag beetle larvae live in decaying wood, compost and leaf mould rather than in turf. Stag beetles in particular are declining in many places and are worth protecting; a large C-shaped grub in rotting timber or a compost heap is very likely one of these rather than a lawn pest.

Compost-dwelling larvae generally. A grub in a compost bin is eating decomposing material, which is the job.

Woodlice and millipedes, which people lump into the same search. Kentucky notes that sowbugs and pillbugs require moist conditions and feed on decaying plant material. Our guide to bugs that curl covers them.

Cutworms and leatherjackets, which are moth and crane fly larvae respectively. Neither is C-shaped: cutworms are smooth caterpillars that curl into a tight coil, and leatherjackets are grey, tough-skinned and legless.

The rule of thumb: a C-shaped grub with legs, under turf, is a lawn pest. The same shape in compost or rotting wood is usually not.

Reading the damage rather than the grub

This is the part that decides whether to act.

Irregular yellowing or browning patches that do not respond to watering, appearing in late summer or autumn.

Turf that lifts like a loose carpet when you pull it, because the roots have been severed. This is the decisive test and it takes ten seconds.

Spongy underfoot.

Birds, skunks or raccoons tearing up the lawn, which is often the first sign people notice. They are after the grubs, and the digging can do more visible damage than the grubs themselves.

Then count. Lift a square foot of turf and count what is underneath. Most healthy lawns tolerate several grubs per square foot without visible damage, and treatment thresholds are usually around five to ten depending on grass type and vigour. Finding two and reaching for a treatment is the common mistake.

What to do if the count justifies it

Timing beats product. Grubs are most vulnerable when small and feeding near the surface, which is late summer in most regions. Treating mature grubs in spring works poorly, and that mismatch is why many treatments disappoint.

Water matters either way. A vigorous, deeply watered lawn tolerates far more root feeding than a stressed one, and the same patch treated and left dry will look worse than an untreated healthy one.

Beneficial nematodes are a genuine option, applied to moist soil in the evening, and they need the soil to stay damp afterwards to work.

Consider the adults too. Japanese beetle damage above ground and grub damage below are the same population, and our garden pest identification guide covers the aerial stage.

Our guide to integrated pest management in a garden covers the framework, which is thresholds and timing rather than treating on sight.

Common questions

I found one grub. Should I treat?
No. One grub in a spadeful is normal soil life. Count per square foot before deciding anything.

Something is digging up my lawn at night.
Likely a bird or mammal after grubs, and worth counting the grubs before treating either problem. Our rodent guide covers what else might be digging.

Is it a grub or a leatherjacket?
Grubs are C-shaped, pale, with legs and a brown head. Leatherjackets are grey-brown, legless and tough-skinned. Different insect, different timing, different treatment.

Final verdict

C-shaped, white, three pairs of legs at the front and a brown head means a beetle larva, and under turf that means a chafer or Japanese beetle eating roots. The same grub in compost or rotting wood is a decomposer and may be a stag beetle worth leaving alone. Decide by pulling the turf and counting rather than by the sighting: most lawns carry a few without harm, and the treatment that works is timed at late summer when the grubs are small and near the surface.

The post Grubs in Soil and Lawn: Which Beetle Larva Is It appeared first on InsectoGuide.

Aphid colour is close to useless for identification, because a single species runs from green to black to pink depending on host and season. What identifies them is the plant they are on and where on it they sit: shoot tips, the undersides of leaves, or below the soil on the roots. The root ones are the only group that does serious damage before you notice anything.

• Dense clustering at a shoot tip: the normal case, and rarely fatal to an established plant.
• Sticky leaves and black sooty mould: honeydew, which is the sign people notice first.
• Wilting despite watering, white waxy roots: root aphids, which need the plant out of the pot.

Aphid guides usually open with a colour chart, which is the least reliable thing about them. Green peach aphids can be green, pink or yellow. Black bean aphids are black but so are several unrelated species. The colour changes with host plant, temperature and generation.

Where the insect is sitting is stable, and it decides what to do.

Sorted by position

What an aphid is, in the features that matter

One to three millimetres, soft-bodied, pear-shaped, with long thin legs and antennae. The feature worth knowing is a pair of cornicles: short tubes projecting from the rear of the abdomen, like tiny exhaust pipes. Almost nothing else has them, and they separate aphids from the small soft insects people confuse them with.

Most of a summer population is wingless and female, reproducing without mating and giving birth to live young rather than laying eggs. That is why a colony appears so suddenly: it does not have to wait for eggs to hatch.

Winged forms appear when a colony gets crowded or the host declines, which is how they arrive on a plant that was clean yesterday.

Honeydew, and what it brings

Aphids feed on sap, which is rich in sugar and poor in protein, so they process large volumes and excrete the excess as honeydew.

That is usually the first thing people notice: leaves that feel sticky, a shine on the foliage below the infestation, and sometimes a sticky film on a patio or a car parked under a tree.

Two things follow from it. Sooty mould grows on the honeydew, a black surface film that does not attack the plant but blocks light. And ants farm aphids for the honeydew, defending them from predators, which is why an ant trail up a stem is often really an aphid problem. Our ant identification guide covers the species that do this.

Root aphids, the group that matters

These are the ones worth knowing about, because they do real damage and the symptoms point somewhere else entirely.

They live below the soil line on the roots, and they are often coated in a white waxy powder that makes an infested root ball look dusted with flour.

The symptoms from above are non-specific: wilting despite adequate watering, stunted growth, yellowing, a general failure to thrive. That overlaps almost exactly with overwatering and root rot, which is why it gets misdiagnosed for months.

The check is direct and takes a minute. Slide the plant out of its pot and look at the root ball, particularly where the roots meet the pot wall and at the base. White waxy deposits and small pale insects confirm it.

Our aphid control guide covers treatment, and the houseplant soil guide covers the other things in compost, most of which are harmless decomposers. Penn State’s description of springtails feeding on mould and decaying material covers the commonest of those, and killing them achieves nothing.

The look-alikes

Mealybugs are the closest confusion: soft, oval, covered in white waxy fluff, clustering in leaf joints. Related, similar treatment, and our mealybug guide covers them.

Whiteflies fly up in a cloud when a plant is disturbed, which aphids do not. Our whitefly guide covers them.

Scale insects are immobile bumps on stems and leaf undersides, often mistaken for part of the plant. Our scale guide covers them.

Spider mites cause fine pale stippling and webbing rather than clustering, and our spider mite guide covers them. Our guide to translucent bugs covers the pale ones indoors generally.

What to do, in proportion

Usually less than people think. An established shrub with aphids at the shoot tips in spring is not in danger, and the population typically collapses on its own once predators arrive.

Water first. A jet of water dislodges most of a colony and costs nothing. Repeat rather than escalate.

Check for ants. If ants are farming them, dealing with the ant trail lets the natural predators work.

Leave the predators alone. Ladybirds, hoverfly larvae, lacewings and parasitoid wasps all eat aphids, and a broad-spectrum spray removes them along with the aphids, which usually makes the next outbreak worse. Our guide to beneficial insects covers what arrives when there is something to eat, and the guide to buying them covers when that is worth doing.

Thresholds, not sightings. UC IPM’s approach to garden insects is built on deciding by damage rather than by presence, and our integrated pest management guide covers applying that at home.

Root aphids are the exception. There the answer is repotting into fresh compost with the roots washed clean, because a surface treatment cannot reach them.

Common questions

They are black. Is that a different species?
Possibly, and possibly the same one on a different host. Colour varies within a species, so it is the weakest thing to identify by.

Curled leaves but no insects.
Common. The feeding caused the distortion and the colony has moved or been eaten. Check inside the curl before treating anything.

Do aphids bite people?
No. They feed on plant sap and have no interest in animals.

Final verdict

Ignore the colour. Aphids at a shoot tip on an established plant are usually a cosmetic problem that resolves when predators arrive, and a jet of water plus patience beats a spray that kills the predators too. Sticky leaves mean honeydew, and an ant trail up the stem means the ants are protecting the colony. The one case that deserves urgency is a plant wilting despite watering, and that one is settled by sliding it out of the pot and looking at the roots.

The post Types of Aphids: Colour, Plant and Where They Hide appeared first on InsectoGuide.

The larva is small, pale and cream-coloured with a darker head, and it builds silk as it feeds. That silk is the diagnostic: webbing in a fold, a silk tube stuck to fabric, or a small portable case the larva drags with it. The adult moth you saw does not feed at all, so killing it changes nothing about the damage.

• Silk is the tell: webbing, tubes or a case. Carpet beetle larvae leave none.
• Damage sits in folds and stored items, not on things worn regularly, because the larva avoids light and disturbance.
• The adult eats nothing. It exists to lay eggs, which is why traps for adults monitor rather than solve.

Most people meet the adult and assume it is the problem. It is not: a clothes moth adult has no functional mouthparts for feeding on fabric. Everything that happens to a jumper happens in the larval stage, in the dark, over months.

What the larva looks like

Up to about a centimetre at full size, cream to off-white, with a slightly darker head capsule and a soft segmented body. It has true legs at the front and prolegs behind, which is what makes it a caterpillar rather than a grub.

The two common species behave differently enough to name:

The webbing clothes moth larva spins silk tunnels and sheets across the fabric as it feeds, and stays inside them. You find irregular webbing with frass caught in it.

The case-bearing clothes moth larva builds a small portable case of silk and fibre from whatever it is eating, and carries it around like a sleeping bag. The case takes the colour of the garment, which is why it is so easy to miss on a dark jumper.

Silk is the check that settles it

The larva that gets confused with this one is the carpet beetle, and the distinction is straightforward once you know what to look for.

Clothes moth larvae leave silk. Webbing, tubes, cases, and frass stuck into it.

Carpet beetle larvae leave bristly shed skins and no silk at all. Kentucky notes that carpet beetle larvae feed on wool, fur, feathers and other animal products, so both are found in the same wardrobes eating the same things, and the silk is what separates them. Our carpet beetle larvae guide covers the other one.

The damage differs slightly too. Moth larvae graze in patches and often eat through in one concentrated area. Carpet beetles leave more scattered, irregular holes. Our wardrobe guide covers reading the damage across all three fabric pests.

Where the damage is, and why

Larvae avoid light and disturbance, which decides everything about where you find them.

In folds rather than on flat surfaces.

Under collars, in cuffs, and along seams, where fibre is dense and the larva is sheltered.

In stored items rather than worn ones. Anything handled regularly is rarely damaged, which is why the casualties are always at the back.

Where a garment was put away soiled. Sweat, skin oils and food traces attract egg-laying far more than clean fibre does. The jumper worn once and stored unwashed is the one that gets eaten.

Under heavy furniture and in carpet edges too, since the same larvae will use wool carpet and underlay.

What they eat, and what they cannot

They need keratin, so the menu is animal fibre: wool, cashmere, silk, fur, felt, feathers, and down. Our guide to which fabrics they eat covers it in detail.

They cannot digest pure synthetics or pure cotton. Blends complicate that: a wool-polyester mix is edible in the wool portion, and heavily soiled cotton can support them because of what is on it rather than what it is.

This is also the point where the pantry moth gets confused into the search. That is a different insect in a different room, feeding on stored food, and Kentucky’s guidance that stored product infestations trace to a single contaminated item applies to it rather than to this one. Our pantry versus clothes moth guide is the fastest way to work out which search you are running.

Why pheromone traps monitor rather than solve

Traps catch male adults using a sex pheromone. They are genuinely useful for telling you whether you have a problem and whether it is getting better, which is not a small thing.

What they do not do is reduce the damage, because the damage is done by larvae already in the fabric and because the females are unaffected. Treat a trap as a thermometer, not a cure.

What actually works

Clean before storing. The single highest-value habit, because it removes what attracts egg-laying.

Store sealed. A zipped bag or a lidded box excludes adults. A garment bag open at the bottom does not.

Wash hot or freeze. Hot washing kills all stages. A sealed bag at household freezer temperature for several days works for a single item that cannot be washed.

Vacuum the wardrobe itself, including the floor, shelf edges and the track, where fibre and eggs collect.

Move things. Both fabric pests need stillness.

Cedar and lavender are weak. They may repel slightly at high concentration in a sealed space and they do not kill larvae already present. Our clothes moth guide covers the treatment properly.

Common questions

I killed the moth. Is it over?
No. The adult does no damage and its larvae may already be in the fabric. Search the folds of stored wool rather than the air.

Holes but nothing found.
Normal. Larvae are small, avoid light and hide inside folds and seams. Check for silk and frass, which persist.

Do they bite?
No. Neither the larva nor the adult bites, and neither carries disease.

Final verdict

Look for silk. Webbing in a fold, a tube stuck to the fabric, or a small case the colour of the garment means clothes moth larvae. Bristly husks with no silk means carpet beetles instead. The moth in the air is irrelevant to the damage, the traps tell you how you are doing rather than fix it, and the habit that actually protects a wardrobe is washing things before they are put away and sealing them once they are.

The post Clothes Moth Larvae: Webbing, Cases and Holes appeared first on InsectoGuide.

The small fuzzy thing sitting motionless on a bathroom tile is almost certainly a drain fly, not a moth. It has one pair of wings held roof-like over the body, and it runs across a surface before taking off. That single behaviour separates it from every real moth, and the room it is in separates the real moths from each other.

• Bathroom or kitchen, resting flat on a wall, runs before flying: drain fly, and the fix is inside the pipe.
• Kitchen, small and buff, weak flight near cupboards: pantry moth, and the source is a food packet.
• Wardrobe, avoids light, hops across fabric: clothes moth, and the damage is done by the larva.

Most household moth searches start with something that is not a moth. Drain flies are so convincingly moth-like that the common name for them is moth fly, and they occur in exactly the rooms where people are least expecting a fly.

Drain flies, the one you probably have

Two to five millimetres, dark grey to brown, densely hairy, with broad wings held roof-like over the body so the outline is heart-shaped. They sit motionless on tiles, on the underside of a worktop, or on the wall above a shower.

Two things give them away. They have one pair of wings, because they are true flies, while a moth has two pairs. And they run across a surface before taking off, then fly a short weak hop and settle again. A moth flutters off directly.

They breed in the gelatinous organic film that coats the inside of a waste pipe, feeding on it as larvae. That is the whole problem and the whole solution: bleach runs straight through the film without removing it, so the fix is mechanical scrubbing plus an enzyme or bacterial treatment that digests it.

Our drain fly guide covers the method, the bathroom guide covers the room, and the under-sink guide covers the other cupboard they use. A rarely used guest shower or a floor drain that has dried out is a common source, and simply running water into it weekly helps.

Fungus gnats and fruit flies, the other small fliers

Neither looks much like a moth, but both get caught by the same search because people describe any small flying insect as a moth when it is indoors.

Fungus gnats are slender, long-legged, and drift around houseplants. The larvae live in wet compost, so the fix is letting the surface dry between waterings rather than treating the adults. Our houseplant soil guide covers them.

Fruit flies are rounder, often with red eyes, and hover near fruit, bins and recycling. Kentucky describes them breeding in fermenting fruit and residues in drains and bins. Our guide to telling the three apart is the page that settles which small flier you have, and it matters because the three need entirely different fixes.

The moths that are actually moths

Two matter indoors, and they live in different rooms.

Pantry moths, chiefly the Indian meal moth, are small with a distinctive two-tone wing: pale at the base, coppery or bronze at the tip. They fly weakly around a kitchen at dusk. The adults do no damage; the larvae are the problem, and they leave silk webbing in packets. Kentucky notes that stored product infestations usually trace to a single contaminated item. Our meal moth guide covers the life cycle, and the removal guide covers the cupboard search.

Clothes moths are smaller, plain buff or golden, and behave nothing like a moth at a lamp: they avoid light, flutter weakly, and often run or hop across fabric rather than fly across a room. Again the larva does the damage, leaving webbing and grazed patches in wool. Our clothes moth guide covers treatment and the pantry versus clothes moth comparison is the fastest way to tell which search you are running.

The rule that saves time: a moth circling a lamp is neither of these. Both indoor pest moths avoid light. Something drawn to a bulb came in from outside and is not eating anything you own.

Caddisflies and plume moths, outdoors

Caddisflies look strikingly like moths, hold their wings roof-like, and gather near water and at lights on summer evenings. They have hairy wings rather than scaled ones, aquatic larvae, and no interest in a house. They are harmless and a good sign for water quality.

Plume moths are the ones that look like a small aeroplane, with wings held out straight and deeply divided into feathery lobes. They are genuine moths, outdoor and harmless, and they get photographed a lot because the shape is so odd.

The quick sort

If the last row is the answer, our guide to insects and light at night covers why colour temperature matters more than brightness.

Common questions

It has fuzzy wings but sits completely still. Moth or fly?
Almost certainly a drain fly. Real moths rarely sit motionless on a bathroom wall in daylight for hours, and drain flies do it constantly.

I keep killing them and more appear.
Because the larvae are inside the pipe. Killing adults on the tile does nothing to the population, which is the single most common mistake in this topic.

Do drain flies carry disease?
They are a nuisance rather than a health risk in a domestic setting. What they signal, a pipe with a thick organic film in it, is worth dealing with regardless.

Final verdict

Count the wings and watch the take-off. One pair, held roof-like, and a run before a short weak flight means a drain fly, and the work is inside the waste pipe rather than on the wall. Two-tone wings in a kitchen means a pantry moth and a packet to find. Plain buff and light-avoiding in a wardrobe means a clothes moth and folds to inspect. And anything circling a lamp came from outside, eats nothing you own, and is best handled by changing the bulb.

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