As mentioned in a recent blog, by definition our summer begins, at least in terms of hot weather, when the cicadas begin to sing. So far the singing is not the deafening roar it sometimes becomes, but cicada season is definitely upon us in total conjunction with the hot, dry weather. Of course, shortly after the cicadas appear, so do the cicada-killers, the largest of the digger wasps. In spite of the fact that they can act rather aggressively, the females who prey upon cicadas seldom sting humans and the males are sting less. Cicada killers love dry, sandy soil because those are the conditions best for digging their nests. So what is bad for the plants is good for the cicada-killers, and boy, are we harboring a population of these very specialized predators! Unfortunately a choice area for cicada-killer nests is near our new pergola, so as you approach you get buzzed, aggressively confronted, by a 3-4 cm long wasp, which, in spite of our great size advantage, is pretty intimidating, and no matter how often you think humans seldom get stung, you tend to react with those well refined primate behaviors to avoid yellow and black buzzy things. Avoidance, in general is a good behavior, so let's not sell it short just because our knowledge of natural history tells us there is no reason to run unless you are a cicada. However, Mrs. Phactor is no one to mess with if your are a black & yellow buzzy beast, so if they know what's good for them, avoidance would be a good behavior because if her enjoyment of this new pergola is reduced by buzzy behavior of nesting cicada-killers, they would be well to look elsewhere for a nesting site. But another possibility exists. Are these some type of super, double-secret miniature drone designed to instigate panic in human behavior? Were those little antennas? And right here in middle America; what gall! Remember, you heard this first here, but quiet, we don't want homeland security to be trampling the gardens. The image is from Bill Bucanhan of the US Fish and Wildlife Service; the Phactor was not going to get close enough to photograph one.
- Home
- Angry by Choice
- Catalogue of Organisms
- Chinleana
- Doc Madhattan
- Games with Words
- Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
- History of Geology
- Moss Plants and More
- Pleiotropy
- Plektix
- RRResearch
- Skeptic Wonder
- The Culture of Chemistry
- The Curious Wavefunction
- The Phytophactor
- The View from a Microbiologist
- Variety of Life
Field of Science
-
-
-
Political pollsters are pretending they know what's happening. They don't.1 month ago in Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
-
-
-
The Site is Dead, Long Live the Site2 years ago in Catalogue of Organisms
-
The Site is Dead, Long Live the Site2 years ago in Variety of Life
-
Does mathematics carry human biases?4 years ago in PLEKTIX
-
-
-
-
A New Placodont from the Late Triassic of China5 years ago in Chinleana
-
Posted: July 22, 2018 at 03:03PM6 years ago in Field Notes
-
Bryophyte Herbarium Survey7 years ago in Moss Plants and More
-
Is Peer Review Broken?7 years ago in Angry by Choice
-
Harnessing innate immunity to cure HIV8 years ago in Rule of 6ix
-
Citizen Science Works!8 years ago in Games with Words
-
-
-
-
post doc job opportunity on ribosome biochemistry!9 years ago in Protein Evolution and Other Musings
-
Growing the kidney: re-blogged from Science Bitez9 years ago in The View from a Microbiologist
-
Blogging Microbes- Communicating Microbiology to Netizens10 years ago in Memoirs of a Defective Brain
-
-
-
The Lure of the Obscure? Guest Post by Frank Stahl12 years ago in Sex, Genes & Evolution
-
-
Lab Rat Moving House13 years ago in Life of a Lab Rat
-
Goodbye FoS, thanks for all the laughs13 years ago in Disease Prone
-
-
Slideshow of NASA's Stardust-NExT Mission Comet Tempel 1 Flyby13 years ago in The Large Picture Blog
-
in The Biology Files
A plant pundit comments on plants, the foibles and fun of academic life, and other things of interest.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Enjoyed your article on Cicada Killers. My first experience with them was in some footers I dug for a big deck I was building. Four CK holes in one footer and 2 in another. We were waiting for inspection to pour concrete.
Not sure you'll see this comment as your word verification is awful, I can not read the first word.
Post a Comment