Soldier Patrol in the Vineyard

The wonderful thing about working in the vineyard is that there are so many interesting sites. On a few of our plants, we would see the dead and shriveled remains of gypsy moth caterpillars and we were in the dark about how that happened until we saw this spined soldier beetle caught in the act of piercing a gypsy moth caterpillar. In writing this blog, I consulted the Internet and found this article in Wikipedia that says that the spined soldier beetles are predators of the gypsy moth caterpillars. We stopped our work to take a few pictures of the spined soldier beetle in action: Our local paper did have an article recently about the large numbers of gypsy moth caterpillars that have been seen in towns in our area. We have seen a few of the moths but not enough to be bothersome. We feel fortunate that we have our cadre of spined soldier beetles patrolling our vineyard.
Please check out this earlier blogpost Star Washers in the Vineyard: The Spined Soldier Beetle to see what the eggs and the first instar of the spined soldier beetles look like.