Mason Wasp

It was stinky hot and humid again today - so the it seemed like a good day for a series of short macro safaris in the yard. They went something like this...

Run outside, camera in hand, look for a bug, crouch down until sweat trickles down back... run back in.

Repeat as necessary

After about 10 of these trips, I am in now inside sipping an iced coffee latte enjoying the air conditioning. Funny thing about me and coffee - I almost never drink hot coffee, but I do really enjoy iced coffee with lots of milk (preferably flavored) in the summer.

Hubs just came in from working on the race car. He and one of the other guys picked up the new trailer this morning - it's huge. Lots of manly swaggering around the driveway, admiring the new chariot (the guys, not me.)

Now, about today's photo... Not the prettiest shot of the day, but I was fascinated to see that this rather large wasp was gathering moist clumps of dirt from around the garden. In fact, if you look at this image LARGE you will see the clump of dirt gathered in his/her forelegs. Very interesting. Upon doing a bit of Googling, I deduced that this is a Mason Wasp and here is what Wikipedia has to say about it...

Potter wasps (or mason wasps) are a cosmopolitan wasp group presently treated as a subfamily of Vespidae, but sometimes recognized in the past as a separate family, Eumenidae.. They are not aggressive towards humans and are, in fact, considered beneficial in the garden as they eat other insects and they also pollinate. While this one (which was about 3/4 of an inch long) gathered mud, it was being buzzed and harassed by a much smaller waspish creature of some sort. Very interesting.

I posted six other shots on Flickr, starting here. And if you don't like spiders, skip the sixth shot in the series - it is of a tiny Orchard Spider - and the fact that it is quite beautiful won't matter if you're an arachnaphobe!

Papa Wren is busy building a second nest for Mama's consideration. Never mind that Mama will be feeding the recently fledged brood for another few weeks until they are fully self sufficient. In fact, while Papa was busy carrying sticks to the newest nest and singing like a mad-man, one of the fledglings was following him around, begging. To no avail, I might add - Papa has got one thing, and only one thing, on his little mind...

And that is the news from hot and humid NJ...

Stay cool

xxoo
Debbi