Eastern Tent Caterpillar

This is a photo of an Eastern Tent Caterpillar.  He is on the side of the rock, so the white stripe is actually going down his back.  He is not your friend if you like a tidy garden because he and his brothers and sisters will spin an ever-expanding silk tent where they live.  They rarely do any lasting damage to their preferred host trees, wild cherry, or landscape trees cherry, crabapple, ornamental apple, peach and plum and sometimes ash, birch, willow, maple, oak and poplar, but they certainly are unsightly. 

If you come across a caterpillar in your garden and don’t know what it is, here is a link to help you identify it.  What’s this caterpillar:  http://www.whatsthiscaterpillar.co.uk/america/