Squatter

About two weeks ago, I noticed what looked to me like a small rock perched on a ledge beneath the overhang of the covered walkway at our back door. Since this is high up and usually unremarkable, I had the thought that maybe Charlie placed the rock on the ledge for some reason unknown to me (I typically blame the out-of-ordinary around our home on my husband!).

This morning I noticed that the "rock" is now bigger and, upon closer inspection, hosting a wasp. My first instinct was to grab the insecticide, but I rather chose the path of education.

This particular wasp is known among we southerners as a "dirt dauber" (also "mud dauber"), particularly for their practice of building nests from dirt and mud. I watched this precocious little lady—the females build the nests—make no less than twenty trips from her growing nest to the soil of the zucchini plants I am growing in a container not 15 feet away. She is building cells where eggs will be deposited, so as she deposits dirt carried by her mandibles, she then must shape the mud in tunnel-like fashion. Once she has made the required number of cells, she sets about smoothing the surface and covering the cells completely. I’ve read that a nest can be as large as a lemon.

But the coolest thing is what she puts inside the cells before she deposits her eggs…

Paralyzed spiders. Seriously. To feed her growing larvae. She stings ‘em with her venom and them drops them into the cells to wait to be eaten by her young.

So this hard-working little dirt dauber is providing us wth a free service—PEST CONTROL!

And she’s so smart! She picked a spot equidistant between the plants I water and the light that draws her prey. Between the insect-eating spiders and this lady dauber, we’re fighting a two front war on insects at our back door. Amazing.

Best of all, dirt daubers are not aggressive wasps and rarely sting unless severely bothered, so I think I will move my tripod back a little further now…See ya!

Oh, before I go, check out this video I found on YouTube. I hate to see the baby wasp that's gonna eat THAT thing!







*In addition to the Wikipedia link in the title of this post, please also refer to the following websites here and here, which were also helpful in my research.