Dogwood Sawfly (…continued)

Armed with my new information about the dogwood sawfly larvae, I excitedly went outside yesterday afternoon to see if any were still there in earlier instars.* (See explanation below)   So I hope you aren’t bored with my quest for knowledge, but here are some more photos of what I found.
This is a discarded larval skin.  There were several of these, so it is impossible to know which one belonged to the yellow fellow in the previous post.  You can see the deck stairs in the background, which lead to the railing where I met him.

Here you can see some of the damage those caterpillars were making.  Even though they eat quite a bit of the foliage, it does little damage to the tree because it happens so late in the growing season.  The deer were already chewing this anyway.  I wonder if it will ever look like a tree as much as they chew on it!
I was beginning to feel a bit disappointed that there weren’t any of the white or yellow larvae crawling around when I saw a small white one fall off a leaf into the mulch below.  This instar has a whitish waxy substance on its skin.  You can actually see where some of the waxy powder left an imprint when the larva landed on the mulch.

So, I was feeling confident that I do have a correct ID on this critter, but a little disappointed that there weren’t any more of the last instars hanging around.  I gave up and decided to photograph some flowers.  The garden is definitely winding down, but the cosmos are still blooming prolifically.

At this moment my camera battery indicator came on, so my daughter got her camera.  We enjoyed peeking under leaves, looking at mushrooms, chasing a dragonfly, etc.  I made my way back over to the dogwood tree and spied this plump little guy.
Now this one is about the same size as the larvae I saw last week just before finding the yellow one.  I am fairly certain it is just about ready to shed its skin and I’m hoping he will still be out there today despite the heavy overnight rains.
Once the yellow instar has completed growing, it no longer feeds on the plant but focuses on finding a suitable over-wintering site. Their first choice would be wood that’s rotting on the ground. (They also sometimes choose wood-sided buildings which explains why woodpeckers sometimes “attack” a house.  They can hear them moving.) Perhaps the neighbor’s wood pile would be a good place to check for the yellow fellow and his friends today.  I’ll let you know how it goes. :) 

* An Explanation of Instars:

As the body of the larva grows, whether butterfly caterpillar or sawfly larva, the skin becomes too tight.  In the Peterson Guide to Caterpillars, Amy Bartlett Wright states: “As it eats and grows, [the caterpillar’s] body stretches until the its skin becomes too tight. The larva then stops eating and molts, shedding its tight skin…and will resume feeding. Later it will outgrow that skin and molt again. The stages between moltings are called instars; a caterpillar will go through several before it reaches full size in its final instar.  This mature larva may bear little resemblance to its first instar.”