Polistes Exclamans Wasp

I never used to give much though to wasps. They were just there, on the periphery, somewhat unpleasant summer facts, to be avoided when possible.

Then I spent one summer sitting on the front swing watching them and realized that they are beautiful. They fly with long, slender, graceful shapes dancing through the air.

And they are full of unexpected variety and beauty. Look at this one, for example. She's not the "classic" black and yellow. She's gold and honey.

Just to be clear, though: I'm still steering away from those stings!

Wasp Farm by Howard Ensign Evans: A book review

And a very belated book review this is, too. I read Wasp Farm by Howard Ensign Evans a while ago and enjoyed it. It's not quite as charming as John Crompton's The Spider, but very nearly. How could I not like a book that seriously gives advice on how best to attract wasps:

Attracting wasps is not difficult; in fact, it is easier than not attracting them. One merely needs to be lazy. Let the weeds and brambles row up, and don't prune the roses and fruit trees or cut out dead sumacs and elderberries: the more unkempt vegetation the more insects for wasps to prey upon and the more hollow or pithy twigs the more cavities for them to nest in. Plow a garden and plant it to interesting things, but don't cultivate too conscientiously and by all means don't go overboard on insecticides: share the wealth with the insects which, after all are mostly attractive and rather amusing (even a worm in the salad provides interesting dinner conversation)

Essentially, Wasp Farm is the tale of time spent in a house chosen specifically because it had a wasp-friendly sort of yard. Evans and his family cultivate, admire, and describe wasps in a friendly approachable way. He likes insects, and he wants everyone else to like them, too.  Seldom have I so wanted to invite an author over for dinner--though possibly without the worms in the salad.

 Oh, and I love his philosophy of learning:

For every man owes it to himself to be reasonably well informed on the subjects that interests him. We should read the great naturalists and try to grasp their sense of wonderment, their mode of marshaling facts to support new concepts. The modern naturalist is better informed, for he stands on the shoulders of giants; he also has the help of technological advances such as the camera and the computer. Perhaps he will never propose a great theory or found a new field of investigation. But to gather well-documented facts which add to the sum total of human knowledge is in itself a noble thing. It need not be wasps...it might equally well be fungi, filed mice, or tardigrades. There are enough unsolved problems in an average back yard to keep a battalion of naturalists occupied for their lives.

Drawback? It is older (originally published in 1963), and the pictures are, therefore, black and white. This should not keep anyone from reading the book. It just means that instant recognition of real, live wasps is unlikely, if Wasp Farm is the only source of information available.

Now that I think of it, it's time I went and saw what else by Howard Ensign Evans is available out there.

Bees: A link or two

I'm still working on the whole bee vs. wasp thing. The couple of articles I've read so far say pretty much what I thought: Bees are stubby, wasps are not. This, of course, doesn't account for the sweat bee. So I'm looking.

In the meantime, here's a neat page on Types of Bees, found via bugguide's link section, which I'm still learning to navigate, and here's a nice, two-minute YouTube from the Green Nature site introducing bee types visually:

Backyard Biology

The Mystery Caterpillar has, once again, made me aware of how little I know about my own backyard.

Thanks to nature shows, I know more about the Monarch Butterfly (which does stop here) and the African Elephant (which does not) than I do about the denizens of my own, city backyard.

Loving accounts of English hedges (nowhere near here) and the New York Central Park (also somewhat distant) are fairly easy to find.

But that isn't what I'm after. What I'm wondering about is what happens in a fairly average backyard--oddly broken up, often cement paved, but with enough flowers and herbs to attract a fair amount of small folk, bees, butterflies, wasps, moths, toadstools, small brown birds, doves, the occasional small hawk (though that was more common when we had bird feeders out).

At this point, I don't even care if the animals are native or not (actually; that's not quite true; I'd really rather not have to listen to someone's indignant account of how the little brown bird I happen to be fond of doesn't belong here, really). I want to know what they are and how they react to each other. Do wasps (and were they wasps or yellow jackets? Is there a difference?) drive off bees? Does the wasps' nest account for the fact that we had far, far fewer fritillaries than normal on the passion vine? Do fritillaries prefer one kind of passion vine over another? Does the presence of regular wasps make it more or less likely that the Orange Dog caterpillar on my lime tree be parisitized? Would they be territorial toward other kinds of wasps? Would they ignore them? What sort of small hawk hovered in the area?

Where do I even start on this mess of tangled questions?

I mean, yes, I have a couple of very interesting books on butterflies out, and one on bees, but I know from past experience that authors tend to be vastly less interested in backyards than in tropical jungles; the butterfly book I just read talked a lot more about Costa Rica than California (which did get briefly mentioned as a spot the migrating Monarch might stop in, so that's something, I suppose).

Further Notes on Wasps

Notes one and two were posted earlier here.

Note: Should you actually, for some reason, want to find a wasp, none will appear.

Note: When one eventually does appear, it will prove nearly impossible to photograph because it will keep moving incessantly.

A Note or Two on Wasps

Note: Wasps, objectively considered, are quite handsome creatures.

Note: It is difficult to objectively consider a wasp when it is sharing the driver's seat of the car with you.