Hornets and Butterflies Update

As of this past weekend, both the “hornet” wasps and the butterflies appear to be gone from the tree in front of my house. However, in the intervening weeks, I had been doing my best to get a good picture of them, so you, my dear readers, might actually see what I was talking about. (And, I might add, you ought to be very appreciative, because this involved me getting right up under that wasp-covered tree, and having them fly around my head. The things I do for you!)

I actually noticed that the tree heirarchy seemed to become split, with the wasps hanging out down around the lower, and therefore person-height, level of the trunk, while the butterflies tended to congregate in the top of the tree, for which I do not blame them. There was, however, one particular butterfly that seemed to like hanging out in the wasp area. It was a bigger one, too, so maybe it was a macho butterfly. Or it was indulging in a cross-species romance. Or it had been adopted by the wasps as a young butterfly. Or it was afraid of heights. Anyway, here’s a picture of the butterfly and a bunch of wasps (click on images for the bigger version):

Also, to give you an idea of how big the wasps were, here’s a picture of a dead one next to my hand. (It died a natural death, I swear.)

But now they’re all gone, and I don’t know where. They left as mysteriously as they came, and do not appear to have built a nest anywhere, so maybe they were just on vacation.