Cool Vineyard Sightings

Recently, perched on one of our dead vines, we saw this Sphinx moth. Last year, I blogged about the caterpillar stage of this moth, Eumorpha pandorus. The caterpillar stage is a voracious eater of grapevine leaves so we were also handpicking the caterpillars off our vines. I did take one home to raise it, only to learn that when the caterpillar is ready to pupate, it seeks a pile of leaves to burrow into the soil, so my husband drew the line at having a bottle filled with soil and leaves in our home and when I let the caterpillar go, it was only too happy to find itself on solid ground. We must have left at least one caterpillar untouched such that this beautiful Sphinx moth was what we saw.

As we do our bug patrol, there are many beneficial insects that we see along with the Japanese beetles. Here is a Big-eyed Elater also called the Eyed Click Beetle, Alaus oculatus. According to the Beneficial Insects in the Garden Website, the larval forms of this click beetle is a great predator of noxious wood-boring larvae, including those of wood-boring beetles. Now, if we could only find a natural predator of the Japanese beetles, (besides me, of course), we would be all set.