Sleepy old Stinger

I grew very wary of the trap towards the end of last Summer when we had a busy hornets' nest in our roof eaves and its residents were often attracted by the light. They look fearsome but are usually softies, very unwilling to attack those who leave them alone - unlike wasps in my experience. Mind you, the definition of being alone may be different for wasps after centuries of persecution by us. Hornets have probably had less of that, being both scarcer and scarier.

Seeing a hornet in the eggboxes this early in the year was by contrast completely unexpected and I was fortunate that it was creeping along the rim of the trap's plastic bowl rather than tucked in an eggbox where I might have unwittingly placed a finger or thumb. It wasn't at all a happy hornet and I suspect that the warm night or the powerful light had attracted it out when it should have stayed tucked up at home.  By midday, it was groggily inspecting our garden table and some time in the afternoon, it died. Notably, none of our extremely moth-minded Robins went anywhere near it. But overnight, it disappeared.

Another non-moth visitor this week was thos Mayfly, one of thousands which conduct their soaring and falling mating flight for 24 hours or so before mating and calling things a day. A strangely brief moment in the daylight after two years spent underwater as a nymph. But then they are scientifically called Ephemera.

Start-of-Summer digging has meanwhile turned up a couple of pupae which in younger days I might have kept to catch. Life is too busy and unpredictable for that now; it's an exercise which requires you to keep a close eye on things, to avoid both missing the emergence or inadvertently trapping the chrysalis in a box.  I reburied these instead.

Now for a snail, peeking optimistically from the mouth of our watering can whose spout is too narrow to release its shell. I am not sentimental about wild animals but in honour of Sir David Attenborough's 100th birthday, Penny and I prodded it back down and then decanted it from the can as far away as possible from our Delphiniums. 

And finally, here is a juvenile Garden Spider whose tinyness I cannot overstate. I am also unable to find enough superlatives for my iPhone 13 Pro which allows me to take these photographs so easily. Thank you!