wasps
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Sumer is icumen in
I’ve heard a few Dog Day Cicadas (Tibicen) recently, at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge and here in Cobble Hill, but it’s still early. In anticipation, the Cicada Killer Wasps (Sphecius speciosus) have begun to emerge. Males are generally seen first; they’re out to claim nesting territory. I saw my first CKW of the summer on…
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Paper
All that remains of that Bald-faced Hornet (Dolichovespula maculata) nest on the memorial I photographed in September. While examining the amazing paper the wasps make to cover their comb, I found something elsenesting between the layers. Oops, sorry about that!
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BFH Nest Down
Bald-faced hornets (Dolichovespula maculata) have been in the news recently. There seem to be a lot of their nests in Brooklyn: a bumper crop or just people noticing more of them? While some seem to think they are the Ebola of wasps, the wasps won’t bug you if you don’t bug them, or their nest.…
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O brave new world
That has such creatures in’t! These are all new discoveries for me, excepting the last, because there’s one thing the arthropods prove, and that’s ever-new discoveries.The aptly-named named Saddleback caterpillar (Acharia stimulea), about 2cm long. The adult moth is one of the fuzzy indistinguishable brown jobs, but this larval stage form is amazingly unique. The…
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“As Big As A Lear Jet”
A couple of years ago, I saw Cicada Killer Wasps (Sphecius speciosus) tunneling nests in two different tree pits in my neighborhood. One of those pits is again a nesting site. It’s notable on the block because it’s the only pit that has a good expanse of bare soil. This wasp was patrolling one of…
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Gnawy
Bald-faced hornet (Dolichovespula maculata) cutting away at the black locust hand-rails at the Native Plant Garden at NYBG.Look at those mandibles! Several hundred workers in a colony will build up those football-sized nests so beloved by nature bloggers from wood pulp and saliva; it looks like a lot of work, because it doesn’t seem like…
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Silent Nests
Revealed by the thinning of the leaves, two more Bald-faced Hornet (Dolichovespula maculata) nests:Note the differences in the color pattern of the wood-pulp paper between the above nest and the one below. I have some paper that is predominately reddish, but the one above is the usual pattern I see here in Brooklyn. The all-gray…
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Low hanging fruit
I hope your Halloween was without plastic, styrofoam, and corn syrup.
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After merely a summer dies the hornet
Unless she’s a queen. A Bald-faced Hornet (Dolichovespula maculata), caste unknown, unexpectedly by the front door buzzer. I rarely see this species, but I know they are neighbors. A local nest was revealed by the fall of leaves a couple of seasons ago. The wood-pulp paper nests are abandoned in the fall and not reused,…
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Under A Big Big Sky
Petrified Forest National Park.Amid the lithified remains of an ancient forest, where the pebbles themselves were essentially petrified mulch, a moving white fluff on the ground was identified as a Thistledown Velvet Ant (Dasymutilla gloriosa), which is actually a wasp. The female is wingless and furry white, like the seedpod of a creosote bush or…
Backyard and Beyond 