Backyard and Beyond

The Cicada Killer Wasps (Sphecius speciosus) are out and about now, collecting pollen at flowers to eat, stabbing cicadas for their young…I’m not telling, but here’s a Dog Day cicada (genus Tibicen), more heard than seen by we ground-huggers.The two wasps pictured above are males. They’re smaller than the females. Here’s a female, scare-the-horses-ginormous, patrolling her tunnel of a nest under some Bearberry (Arctostaphylos ova-ursi) in the Pine Barrens section of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.