Back to The Mud | Backyard and Beyond

Back to The Mud

Published July 29, 2022 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Remember earlier this month I found this little mud pile swarming with Common Blue Mud-dauber Wasps?

Pretty much every time I’ve gone in there since, there was a wasp flying around. Photos above are from Saturday. That was the first time I caught the wasp entering one of the old holes. What was she doing?

On Sunday, this hole was closed off. In Heather Holm’s wasp book, we learn that Chalybion californicum re-use old nests, often of other mud-daubers like the more common-around-here Yellow-legged (Sceliphron caementarium). (I originally thought this was a Yellow-legged’s work.) Common Blue, Holm says, doesn’t carry new mud in but moistens the existing dirt to re-mud, as it were. Wished I’d seen her flying in with some spider prey for her young (the wasp, not Holm)!

But wait! Two days later, on Tuesday, this was the situation. Side hole covered, center hole re-opened. Same yesterday, Thursday.

But… in another nook of the same room yesterday… another mud nest!

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