Early this afternoon, I found it far to stifling to sit inside so I escaped the confines of the Little Bayou House. Outside, I could breathe! After taking a few deep, lung-filling breaths, I fiddled around in the garden. It felt good being out in the sunshine and cooling breezes. While I am not one to complain about being home day after day, I do need my outdoor time! What am I saying?? I stay on the Bayou about 99% of my time. It is here that I feel safe, at peace and welcome. I cannot say that about too many places.
After tending to the tiny seedling tomato plants, I figured that I would sit on the steps and enjoy the view for a while. These steps are directly in line with the pier so the scenery is quite exquisite! It was not long, however, before my eyes were directed toward my feet. Buzzing about the ground below me were a good number of bees...or wasps...or...something. Time to investigate!
In total, there were about 30 insects within a few feet. Some were tiny but one large bee...wasp caught my eye. A scoliid type wasp was crawling about on the board path as if searching for something. She went from board to dirt and back again. This wasp did not bother any of the tiny bees but found a small hole and immediately started digging. I took the opportunity to photograph her up close and personal! While I was busy photographing the wasp, the other insects kept right on digging their nesting sites. Not once did any of them attempt to sting me. In fact, the whole lot of them seemed perfectly oblivious of my presence.
Scoliid wasps have a rather unique..albeit morbid...way of laying eggs. Instead of digging nesting site holes and providing paralyzed insects for their future kids, the Scoliid Wasp merely hunts for a beetle larva hole, digs it larger until she can fit, stings the larva to paralyze it and then lays her egg on its rear. The larva remains alive but cannot move. The wasp egg hatches and the wasp larva starts eating its beetle larva host. If other wasp eggs are in the same larva, the first one to hatch eats all of the other eggs before starting to dine upon the beetle larva. Survival of the fittest...or first, in this case.
I must admit that spending an hour or so watching bees and wasps gave me the fresh air and escape I needed. Tomorrow, the yard work continues so the brain will not feel trapped. Mother Nature can often find cures for our doldrums. The entertainment is endless.
Around the Bayou, the bees are busy...so are the wasps. Yesterday, I watched as a small black wasp carried off a huge cross spider. The spider was stuffed down a small tunnel in the ground to become food for a future generation of the wasps. This morning was spent watching another wasp do the same job. Keep in mind that the wasps doing all this hard work are all females. The males have nothing to do with rearing the young of most ground bees and wasps. The female digs the hole, creates the birthing cells and catches all of the prey. The male flies around doing not much of anything.
This morning's wasp was a weevil wasp. This one caught me by surprise. Mark and I were rigging the sprinkler in the garden when I noticed a wasp flying erratically around me. Hmmm? "Go away, wasp. I am not hurting you." The wasp did not listen. When I finally identified the wasp and saw that she was carrying prey, I knew immediately what was the problem. I, obviously, was standing on her tunnel! Sure enough, as soon as I took a step backward, she honed in on a certain spot on the ground. She dropped her prey of a stinkbug and started digging out the dirt that I had accidentally pushed over the opening. After a few seconds, she had the hole cleared and was hauling the paralyzed stinkbug down into the hole. Her larvae would dine on the bug. I watched as she backed out of the hole and flew off to find another insect. On, happy day! She headed right back to the tomato plants! The stinkbugs are such a nuisance that I was singing praises for the weevil wasp!
Sometimes it pays not to kill every bee or wasp you see. Most solitary ground wasps are not aggressive. They catch tons of garden-destroying bugs so do us huge favors. This one is welcome to make as many holes as she wants and I promise that I will try to not to step on them, if I see them! Carry on, Little Mama! Carry on! And just so you will know, I am aware that I probably spend far to much time watching the critters around the Bayou.
Sometimes, it takes a tragedy for us to see beauty. Last evening, I headed out to the compost pile to discard the scraps of the day's meals. Several baby raccoons visit the heap each night to feast upon our leftovers. Tossing the scraps not only helps to clean the kitchen, it also feeds some of my bayou friends. This has become the nightly ritual of house cleaning!
It was on the way back into the house that I noticed another friend in distress. A bright red spider had fallen from above the door and down to the back porch floor. The lovely creature was clearly not doing too well but I could see no sign of injury. The poor thing writhed in agony as I watched. Then, as if on cue, a small black wasp flew in and attempted to show me who was boss. No, it did not sting but rather tried to intimidate me by getting in my face. Hmmph! Sorry, wasp. I was more interested in the spider.
The wasp settled down and soon showed me why it was so upset with my presence. The wasp had obviously stung the spider and was attempting to carry it off to its nest. The wasp was a ground wasp that needed the spider as food for its upcoming offspring. The wasp, being much smaller than its prey, tugged and tugged at the huge spider. Finally, it made progress and soon disappeared over the edge of the porch floor. The show had ended for the evening.
The spider was one of the many orb weavers that inhabit the area. This one was called a Cross Spider and for good reason. The white markings on its abdomen were almost the perfect replica of a highly ornate cross! What a thing of beauty! Another fact noticed was that the abdomen was quite swollen. This spider was gravid! Well, that saddened me to no end. No baby spiders would be roaming the place any time soon.
The wasp, on the other hand, was a small black wasp. Yep...it was actually called (for the lack of a better name) a Small Black Wasp by an "knowledgeable" insect identifier group. Hmmm..well, I could have identified it as that had I only used my head. It was small and it was black. So...Small Black Wasp, it is. These wasps are ground wasps meaning they dig holes in the ground to use as nests. The female wasp hunts spiders to sting and paralyze. She, then, hauls the spider to the her hole and proceeds to shove the spider down into one of the several cells. She pokes the spider into a cell then lays an egg near it before capping off that cell. Keep in mind, the spider is not dead. It is merely paralyzed so it will not decay before the wasp egg hatches. The wasp larvae will begin to eat the spider while it is still alive.
That circle of life takes a funky turn with these two. In the current case, the wasp managed to overpower the spider. That made the wasp the predator. However, it could have been just the opposite. Had the wasp been caught in the spider's web, a different scenario would have taken place. The spider would have eaten the wasp and it would have nourished her eggs. The baby spiders would have been born.
It just goes to show that you never know what is happening just outside the back door. Predators of all sizes and shapes can be lurking directly above your head or below your feet! Take a look outside! Things are interesting!
