Lunch is fought over.

I made the usual mistake of setting out with an image in mind, fungi, then discovering something that required a completely different lens. This was taken from a distance of about 2.5 metres using the Nikon 105mm Macro lens, which is an excellent portrait lens and seems able to cope with some other shots.

On the reverse side of this tree I noticed about 10 - 12 Red Admirals fluttering around plus a wasp or three. We haven't seen many wasps this year so I was a bit surprised to see them. Moving around the tree I saw a group of very agitated wasps working as a group. It seemed they had located a supply of sap but just adjacent to them was a small sap well, so it was obviously something else. After a few minutes the wasps moved as a group and I saw a white spot on the trunk, this gradually got larger as the wasps tugged at it. By now about 2 mm of grub or larvae was visible, it had been torn apart and looked like the end of a shrimp. The butterflies were very excited, and were pushing the wasps away, one especially went right up to the wasps, planted it's forelegs either side of the grub and fended the wasps off with her antennae.

Then the picture changed somewhat. Two wasps appeared and made me retreat a tad. I'm sure both were from a different species as they were, by comparison, huge. From a quick Google it appears they are soldier wasps. The butterfly stood it's ground despite the size and threat. It was only when I put the images on the Mac I could see that she was also feeding from the "soup" that the main bunch of wasps had created from the grub, she lifted her forelegs off but left her proboscis in the mix.

I have never seen such behaviour previously. It just shows what this site is about, making us open our eyes. large