Wasps

The other day I had a small insect drop on to the floor of our laundry, I think I had shaken it off my clothes, as I had been working in the garden most of time that day. At first I thought it was a native bee. It was very similar in shape to the little solitary burrowing bees we have here. I managed to scoop it up in a cloth and show it to Winnie before it flew off. To day I have been trying to identify it and found that is was not a bee, but a wasp, a cuckoo wasp, from the (Chrysalidae) family. A very interesting little creature indeed.

http://australianmuseum.net.au/image/Cuckoo-wasp/

http://australianmuseum.net.au/Cuckoo-wasps/

I hope I see more of them as they are incredibly bight in color and very pretty, in my opinion.

Another wasp that has come to our garden over the years, is the sand wasp.

http://australianmuseum.net.au/Sand-wasps/

They came one year when we had a lot of extreme heat and made their burrows across the road in the one of the garden beds of the little park. Now you may think, ew, wasps, but these little guys were cute and fascinating. Winnie and I had a great time photographing them and unlike honey bees they showed no agitation at us getting too close. Their attention was more on the flowers in our garden and on each other. It was very funny to watch them become rather frenzied with mating and mistaking the honey bees for their intended mates, needless to say the poor old honey bees were not impressed.
I am going to have to see if I can dig out the pictures we have of them.

On of the favorite visitors to our garden is a wasp, commonly referred to as a Blue Ant.

http://australianmuseum.net.au/Blue-Ant/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_ant

We have only identified the females, as they are the easiest to spot. I will often see a flash of blue in the grass and fine one hunting around the grown for victims for her nest, we have occasionally found them in flowers as well. We also have pictures of them and I will see if I can dig them out too.
Found a couple of the pictures I took of this little creature.

The last on my list of wasps is the aphid wasp. I could not find info on the one that we have here but they all feed the same and this will give you an idea of what they are about.

http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/WATER/U/parasite.html

Between these little guys, the ladybugs and hover flies, we have very few aphids around, they are tiny, only about 2mm in size and very hard to photograph, as they are very busy and fast moving.

We are seeing more and more diversity in our garden all the time and the fact that I do not like using chemicals is playing a big part in that diversity growing and becoming stronger. I don't panic when I see pest insects in my garden, in fact I get rather exited at times, it means our little warrior aliens will arrive soon and the battle will begin.
Who needs TV? I have real aliens living in my own back yard.