Meet the Black and yellow mud dauber wasp who comes around every year for the mud at our ponds. Never have I had a issue with these wasps! This is a shot I took as I was hovering over this one.
These wasps look much more aggressive then they truly are! All of them that show up here for mud fly off to the south, so I can only assume that is where they nest? In fact I watched a little boy harassing some form of bee in which he ran inside his home crying. Some folks do have to learn the hard way.
One thing I found interesting while researching this wasp is how they have been found to be the direct result of bringing down airplanes killing everyone on board. I thought this was interesting.....
I watch these come and go for several years now. The other "bee", species who are here getting drinks or doing what they do do not appear to distract this wasp from daily duties. Nor have we ever had a issue with this mud dauber coming inside the house, or our outbuilding in the years it has been coming here. We do actively check for such things since after all I am not one of those who have never been stung before by insects and it is not a pleasant experience.
I do understand the fact that some creatures on our planet are acceptable to kill. At this time these Mud Dauber we do not see as something that needs killing. We do not have children here as I have said these are not coming into the house and are not threatening.
The above photograph is showing the mud that these mud dauber's grab and fly off with.
This one is flying off with the prize of some mud. These Mud Dauber's help keep down the insect population here. Most folks know by now who keep up with my photography, or my blogs I do not use chemicals here. Therefor we do have bad and good insects here, black widow spiders for instance that are killed on site (both the males and the females). I do not put these black and yellow mud daubers on the bad list, I have had no reason to do this.
If you say go to the open web to research these black and yellow mud daubers you may come across pages and pages of how to kill them, however I found it interesting how a simple question as, "what eats the mud dauber", or "what eats the black and yellow mud dauber", will or has shown little results.
We have MANY birds here. Birds that eat insects. Never have I seen a bird pluck one of these black and yellow mud dauber's up and consume it. However, I can only guess the birds are what keep the black and yellow mud daubers in check other then the chemicals so many people LOVE to use......
I will finish this off with this black and yellow mud dauber washing itself on one of the native red rocks we have around the ponds. Some of these photographs have been shown and used before in blogs and such.
Thank you for coming by reading up on my observations of the life we have here at home.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mud_dauber
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