‪Pseudosphinx tetrio‬

I found a beautiful caterpillar crawling up a tree, here in Barbados.
Naturally, I took a few photos and then looked him up on the internet.

It's never a good idea to pick up caterpillars that you aren't familiar with.  In this case, it was a good precaution as he has a nasty bite.

Pseudosphinx tetrio‬ is a common Caribbean moth whose host plant is frangipani which produces the flowers we call plumeria.

Like monarch caterpillars on milkweed, it converts the sap of the frangipani to a chemical which make him very unpalatable to eat. Hence the bright colours of the caterpillar: birds beware!

A couple of nights later, a large, dark sphinx moth flew into the kitchen, drawn by the lights.

It was indeed the Pseudosphinx tetrio‬, commonly known around here as the frangipani hawk moth.