Who Knew?

I'm probably not the only person to be surprised to see this large hornet nest in our neighbors' tree today, now visible thanks to branches suddenly bare of bright leaves, thanks to much wind and rain over the past few days.

I was able to get up fairly close to take photos, as the few hornets wandering on the nest's exterior were moving very slowly and showed no interest in me. My camera has only a 4X zoom, so I had to crop in to get today's image.

Based on a quick Google search, it seems likely that this is a nest built by baldfaced hornets (Dolichovespula maculata), builders of "round, exposed paper nests, usually high in trees and often up to a foot in diameter," which this nest certainly was.

I think that some of the gray areas in the attractively striped nest were taken from our deck railings, as I remember seeing hornets at work there, stripping off miniscule pieces of the wood, which they chew into a pulp used to build the nest. Functional beauty!

(On our home front, we've finalized the bathroom tile details and the order has been placed. The tiles are made in Texas, so it will be a couple of weeks before they arrive. We're hoping that by the end of next week the bamboo flooring will be down in the living/dining room and we can move the furniture back in.

Escaping the dust and mess, we had a low-key night out on the town tonight -- you can see me enjoying myself here.)