It’s time to suck the lilac sap again.
How does one tell individual insects apart? Well, look at the abdomen patterns on these Cicada Killer Wasps. There are subtle distinctions between individual females as well as between individual males.
And then there’s sexual dimorphism. The male is rather smaller.
Females are big and burly for a reason: they need to fly while holding paralyzed cicadas for their young. Dog day cicadas run close to 2″ long including their wings.
Here’s a female emerging from her burrow of a nest, amidst the freshly excavated dirt.
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This work by Matthew Wills is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Backyard and Beyond 
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