It looks like some kind of geometrid moth. There's about a bazillion different kinds. The larva is a looper caterpillar.

Here is a link that might be useful: geometrid moth info page on BugGuide

Yes, geometrid. The caterpillar of any geometrid is called an inchworm. Not all looper caterpillars are inchworms.

Your moth is a geometer in the genus Scopula, most likely Scopula limboundata, the "large lace-border" (large in this case meaning just over an inch wide!). The caterpillars may eat a wide variety of plants.

Scopula purata is another very similar geometrid moth, much less common.

The photo is blurry enough and these moths vary enough that it could be either one, but the most common moths are encountered and photographed most often.

Oh, thank you guys so much! I've spent HOURS trying to get an ID on this guy. This photograph comes closest to the one I posted, doesn't it? "Lace-bordered" is a very apt description.

On the same beans was this guy:

{{gwi:64975}}

But to tell the truth, this caterpillar was so much larger than the moth, I didn't think they were related. I thought the caterpillar was a looper of some sort, not too far off, but there are so many, it's hard to find a specific one from just a photograph.

Again, thank you so much! I've seen only one moth and one caterpillar on the beans but will keep an eye out. The caterpillar was munching away on a leaf, so I knew I wouldn't be able to keep my laissez-faire attitude if I found a lot of them!

It took me about 5 minutes to make the moth ID, but I had the advantage of having some stored moth image plates from the Moth Photographer's Group, and only had to review 6 plates to find your moth. The MP Group is a good place to ID moths because there can be upwards of 100 moths per plate and it makes for easy scanning of a lot of moths in a hurry.
You can Google them.

You really have to have some expertise at bugguide because they don't show such large groupings.

The image link you provided to mothsandbutterflies is one I also visited to pin down your moth.

Your imaged caterpillar is likely a noctuid moth larva of some kind, armyworm, etc. that will turn into a brown moth more robust than your geometrid. So you were right, they are not closely related. You may not want to keep too many noctuid caterpillars around, they are exceedingly common and can do a lot of chewing.

That geometer moth was probably just roosting for the day and not harming your beans.

Larry

Not to belabor this topic, since you IDed the moth, but I am really grateful for your zeroing in on it. One reason I was so interested was because I hadn't seen the moth before, and I see from the map it's been commonly found two states west of Georgia, in Missouri.

OTOH, we do have apple trees, blueberry bushes, clover and plenty of dandelions. Those are apparently some of the host plants they feed on, not beans, so the moth probably wasn't on an egg-laying mission and was roosting, as you say. We also have two pear trees not far from the garden that they may have been attracted to, though they aren't listed as a host plant for the larvae. (Scopula limboundata) Larvae feed on the leaves of a variety of plants, including apple trees, blueberries, clovers, dandelions, wild cherry trees.

http://www.hsu.edu/content.aspx?id=6587

As for the caterpillar, if they're chewing on my vegetable crops and there aren't too many of them, I like to hand-remove them and toss them out where they can be recycled into the local bird-diets. If there's an infestation of them that I can't keep down to a dull roar, I have Bt in my arsenal of insecticides.

Yes, the distribution map you refer to also shows a record for Georgia. These maps are of course a very incomplete record of moth occurrence and may reflect mostly where the moth was searched for.

I also came across, on a wiki, the hostplant list your mentioned and thought it a bit far-fetched, but possible. Sometimes sightings of adult moths found on plants are assumed as a hostplant record, rather than actual caterpillar chewing, since it is much easier to identify the adult than it is the larva.