What type of insect is this?

iTS CALLED A bagworm, WHICH IS A LARVAE OF SOME SPECIES OF pSYCHID MOTHS. These moths are voracious feeders onornamental trees, orange trees, and rosebushes. When I worked in AFrica, theyd cultivate em on ACacia trees to eat. (taste a little like grasshopper when toasted)

They need to be controlled or they can strip a tree of needles in a few weeks
Heres what they look like in the field

Farmerman is correct.

Thank you Farmerman! That is exactly the critter.

If I toast him, I'll dip him in chocolate.

We had bag worms in some fir trees on one side of our property when i was a child. My grandfather got rid of them by suffocating them. He took an old straw broom, soaked in coal oil, and lit it. He then stubbed out the flames, but the coal oil continues to smolder. He then held the smoldering broom stub in the branches affected by the bag worms. It worked. This was also the method he used to make wasps, both paper hangers and mud daubers, leave their nests and abandon the site. I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS METHOD. He was experienced and knew what he was doing. Playing with fire is not something one should do unless one is skilled and experienced.

we picked a bunch off trees by hiring about ten AMish kids and giving them buckets and paying em a nickel a bag. We spent about 300 bucks and rid our place of the damn things. They can take out whole rows of trees.

Fuckin evolution.

I don't think you have to worry about evolution among the Amish any time soon.

My grandfather took action as soon as he saw the bag worms, and we were rid of them. It was a period of wide-spread infestation in the U.S., mid-1950s.

The ones they adapted to acacia trees had bitter oily tatse. I never ate one of the local varieties that eat off pines and firs.

What is the cocoon made of? It appears to me that the animal gathers needles and sticks and spins a silk to bind them. Is this the case? Or are the 'sticks' in the coocan actually grown by the creature?

Also, how does it malipulate the 'sticks'? We observed the creature prop itself up with the sticks to reach a leaf that was left nearby. Additionally, I witnessed twice the creature 'jump' a bit with (in) the cocoon. I find it hard to believe that its small legs are strong enough to malipulate the 'sticks' in order to do this, even assuming that the sticks are set in such a way that they could be moved from the inside (which doesn't appear to be the case).