i hope somebody here can help me ID a pest/problem in some shrubs and trees around our neighborhood. attached is a picture of a roadside bush almost totally covered with "web". there are trees which were totally covered, leaves totally gone and i dont know whether the trees will survive. we have not seen anything in our garden yet but are worried our plants will also get affected.
I don't knowif you have tent caterpillars in the Netherlands but that's what would make a structure here in Canada. If at all possible cut down the tree/limbs that have the tent and burn it, the caterpillars will strip the tree completely, there really is no harm to the tree because if the leaves are consumed early in the season they should grow back but the caterpillars are considered pests and because they are protected by the tent birds are unable to get to them. If it is a small tree, it would be just has easy to cut it down and burn it before the caterpillars can move to another tree. The caterpilars turn into moths.
Insect larvae of some sort (probably moth caterpillars), feeding on the leaves, and spinning silk for defence against birds. The shrub looks like Euonymus europaeus.
thank you for your replies. am trying to contact some organizations to check whether these caterpillars are considered pests but i havent gotten a straightforward reply yet. ..spinning silk for defence against birds.... is this why there were lots of birds (mainly crows) hovering around "infected" trees and shrubs?
Could be, another solution would be to take a stick and break the webbing up to allow the birds to go in and pick the caterpillars out, but from the size of the colony in your picture it would take a lot of birds, there are literally hundreds of caterpillars in these "tent Cities".
Crows will be strong enough to get through the defences and take the caterpillars without being worried about getting tangled in the webbing (a real risk for small birds like warblers).
