End of August

I've heard people say that August is the Sunday of summer. 

Here's to the last Sunday of August 2018 and summer's end!

I've posted below a few favorite photos from my August blogs of years past. 

A great Egret coming in for a landing, trailing toes. Click to enlarge.

A monarch butterfly. 

Rolling hills of Northern New Jersey in August. 

A laughing gull line up. 

Honey bee drinking a drop of water from a leaf. 

A carpenter bee on milkweed flowers. 

A bullfrog keeping an eye on me.

Snow geese overhead. 

A bumblebee at work. 

A great black wasp. 

A summer azure butterfly with striped antennae.

A deer watching me watch him. 

A baby northern cardinal with punk hairdo. 

An elegant monarch butterfly caterpillar climbing upward. 

The Great Black Wasp

The great black wasp, Sphex pensylvanicus. 

The great black wasp is my absolutely favorite wasp -- for two reasons. First, it is beautiful: jet-black with blue and purple reflections in its wings. Second, it is thrilling to see one because they are so big. I always have a moment before I recognize it, when my subconscious tells me to run away. I know they are not aggressive but it takes a few seconds to overcome my instinct.

They are called great because they are so big -- up to almost an inch and a half long. I see them in my Brooklyn neighborhood from July through October. I've written about them before (click here to read an earlier blog) but I saw the one in the photos today and was reminded how much I like them and how pleased I am to see them every summer.

Click to enlarge. 

Great Black Wasp

The great black wasp, Sphex pensylvanicus. Click to enlarge.

Great black wasps are big -- up to almost an inch and a half long -- and dramatically black with blue iridescence on the wings. I saw a few of them on summersweet (Cethra alnifolia) and milkweed bushes in Brooklyn Bridge Park this week. Adult great black wasps eat flower nectar and are important pollinators. They dwarfed the honeybees and smaller wasps that were also eating there.

Great black wasps are solitary wasps that do not live in colonies like the familiar yellow jacket wasp. Instead, the female great black wasp digs a multi-chambered tunnel in soft soil to make a nursery for her offspring. She hunts for large insects, usually katydids; stings them to paralyze but not kill; and takes them into the tunnel nest. She provisions the nest with several katydids, lays eggs on them, and then pushes dirt into the nest opening to close it. The eggs hatch into larvae that eat the katydids. Then they pupate through the winter and emerge as adults in summer to begin the cycle again.

Great black wasps are sometimes called katydid-killers. It's no coincidence that I see them in Brooklyn Bridge Park where there are flowers (for nectar) and katydids (for baby food) -- everything a great black wasp could want. Click here to see the greater angle-wing katydid, Microcentrum rhombifolium, that I wrote about last summer.