Case Moth

This morning I was checking over the TreeProject seedlings. Some of them are getting very tall, and would be ready to plant out if there was some chance of good rain to get them established. However, I found that a number of the eucalyptus seedlings had been decapitated, and this was the culprit:

The larva of some species of case moth. It has constructed its case of twelve or more sticks of equal thickness:

Unfortunately those "sticks" were the main stems of multiple eucalyptus seedlings. In the shot above you can maybe see the silk wound around the sticks to keep them together. You can also see the severed stem of the tree on the right-hand side.

Fascinating as the case moth is, I couldn't really allow it to continue munching its way through the seedlings, so I carefully removed it:

That's it sitting on my gardening glove. I took it to a young eucalypt about 3 metres tall elsewhere on the block. The tree has plenty of thin branches that the case moth can use to extend its protective cocoon without endangering the life of the tree. When I checked back a few hours later, it had moved off, so I hope it lives out its life happily in the bigger tree.