Sphex ichneumoneus

[Peter M. Noyes]

This Golden Digger Wasp is a member of the Sphecidae (Digger) family of wasps. They sting and paralyze their prey. They nest in holes in the ground where they lay their eggs. They capture insects, paralyze them with wasp toxins and place them in the nest, When the eggs hatch the wasp larve feed on the living paralyzed insects. They drag their prey to the opening of the nest, drop it, go inside and inspect the nest, crawl back out, and drag their prey inside the nest. If you move their prey they will find it after some time and repeat this procedure. You can do this repeatedly. Note the large compound eye and the claws on the legs for holding their prey.
Picture taken with a Nikon D2X with a 70 - 200MM F2.8 VR lens. 1/350sec at F8.0 ISO 400

[Mike Moats]

WOW Peter, this is really nice. Great natural behavior shot. The BG is perfect, maybe a little selective sharpening on the body. Excellent image.

[Robert O'Toole]

Beautiful wasp and great image colors. Agree with Mike about the sharpening. So question is did you get any of the wasp with prey?


Robert

[Alfred Forns]

Excellent image Peter LIke the way you were able to line up for max dof !!! Very pleasing and beautiful I find these type settings are difficult for a clean image mainly form oof front elements This looks great !!!

[Ed Cordes]

I like this a lot! I especially like the way the left "hand" seems to cradle the flower bud. I also learned a lot from your narrative. Nature is wonderful, but can be kind of gross as well!

[Stephen Stephen]

Lovely colours on this wasp Peter. I like the pose as well. The wasp looks a tad soft but it could be my monitor.

[Peter M. Noyes]

Robert, No I didn't get any pictures of the wasp with any of its prey. I wish I did!

[Jeroen Stel]

Hi Peter,

Love the spring feel this has to it due to the colours.
Great setting and i agree a bit of selective sharpness to the wasp would highly improve this photograph!

Greetings,

Jeroen Stel