I've got a cedar tree near the back of my house that seems to be affected by some manner of parasite, currenty in pupae stage. They're in silken cocoons, but with dead sprigs of cedar wrapped fully around the cocoon, and they cover the tree With some of them, there is an obviously exoskeleton-like protrusion from the bottom end. Within the tree, but mostly fallen off beneath it, are also many small reddish-brown pellets of some sort.

The adjacant trees are largely unaffected, though I noticed today that there was now a single cocoon on the most adjacent tree, which happened to have a large brown locust of some sort sitting on it(though this could have been mere coincidence). I wouldn't have paid the locust mind had it not been commisurate with the size of the (larger than average) cocoon it was sitting on.

Anyway, does anyone know what these are? It's certainly working towards defoliating the tree pretty well, so I'd also like to get rid of the infestation, if anyone knows.

Thanks. I can also provide pictures of the cocoons and pellets if that would help someone. Cheers.