Bugfest

One of those items on my mental list of images to capture is the emergence of newborn mantises from their egg sac. I’ve gotten recently hatched nymphs a couple of times, but none ever emerging.


On spotting an egg sac near the pond in the park close by a few days ago, I found dangling debris, the shredded structure of the sac, that indicates the hatching has already occurred. read more

Things change

Just a few posts ago, I featured some yellowjackets working on their underground nest. Today, I discovered I was not the only one who had found them.

Sometime in the last few days, something had dug up the opening into the nest and removed several large portions of comb, leaving them strewn about the ground nearby. It was a bit curious, because the excavation wasn’t read more

Frustrations, part four

So this afternoon, noticing the massive activity at a yellowjacket’s burrow in my yard, I decided to try and get some nice close shots of their work. That would be called, “foreshadowing,” in English Lit classes, wouldn’t it? Ah, not in the way that you’re thinking…
Eastern Yellowjackets (Vespula maculifrons) are generally ground-nesting wasps, read more