How do wasps do it?

Apparently very carefully.

This particular wasp, if indeed it is a wasp, is a very common sight at the grove. It is about an inch long, but had never shown any signs of aggression and behaves more like a fly. I suspect it as being a wasp due to the separation of the thorax and abdomen.

I haven't blipped it before, even though it is easily approachable with stealth, keeping it for one of those days when blips are hard to come by, as a backup. I have numerous shots of this little beasty in my rejects folder. But the capture of a copulating pair was special, promoting the humble black wasp to blip status.

They weren't put off by my intense interest, shining my rim light in their faces, but they were not happy about it. A couple of times they flitted off to another leaf, never releasing the grip on each other. Clever little BUGgers. Of the fourteen contenders for today's blip, this was an easy choice.

I returned to the big bee location of yesterdays blip armed with some printouts, tripod and steel rule and took a few snaps. Back at the lab I cut and pasted, I zoomed, stretched, jiggled and rotated (this could turn into a poem). The rule shots that I took were close but not the exact location, but there was enough information to get a measurement to within reasonable accuracy. I made the length to be 36mm (1.42 inches), I guess things look bigger when you are facing death. The largest bee in the world is 39mm long, just 3mm longer than the blipped bee, so still impressive.

As I started my second session it started to rain. Rather than shelter, I made a dash for home. Glad I did, it belted down for the best part of an hour. The road outside my house became a river. Naturally I took lots of photos but decided to stick with the grove blips. You can read about the floods here.

Dave