Sunday, October 02, 2011
Home and garden
I ventured into the garden for a short while at midday, where several European Hornets are still feeding on the ivy flowers. Seven visible segments on the abdomen of this individual point to a male, or drone.
In fact, these magnificent insects are living on borrowed time because soon they'll die, leaving only the new queens to hibernate through the winter and then start their own nests in the spring. This year they are as retiring as usual, moving behind the ivy if I get too close with the camera; whereas the Common Wasps come straight at me. One wasp (half its size) dive-bombed a hornet, which fell clumsily into a spider's web. However it scrambled out easily enough, unlike a wasp we saw a couple of days ago which had flown into a Garden Spider's web near the door. The spider was in the act of trussing up the wasp in a silken cocoon, presumably to eat later.
The hornets, and a blackbird singing somewhere beyond the garden, made up a little for being housebound and miserable with flu on this last, lovely weekend of the summer.
// posted by Christine @ 8:28 AM 
