Saturday 11 January 2014

It's raining cats and wasp nests?

We had a rather violent storm (or rather convergence of four storms) here on Monday afternoon that dumped a good amount of much needed rain.  The bottom floor of the hospital where I work flooded, we nearly lost power to the building and a couple of people in the community were even struck by lightning.  

Working late, it was night time when I was finally able to drive home but fortunately well and truly after the storm had passed.  It wasn't until the next morning that I could survey the damage.  Surprisingly there were only a couple of branches down around the place at home.  We'd had a few storms the week before that must have cleaned off the dead ones from the gumtrees already.  

There was; however, a strange grey hump shape sitting on the lawn.  It wasn't moving so it was either dead or inanimate.  Inching closer I could finally tell it was the nest that had been suspended from the underside of a gumtree branch.  I had hoped it was wild bees but looking at this it's more like a huge wasp nest.  The ants have been having fun exploring it since it made its landing.


The mothership has crashlanded
Close up of the comb

Someone's secret stash of pancakes - saving them for a rainy day



6 comments:

  1. My God. Those photos are truly amazing.

    You must have needed to move it, that would have been tricky!

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    1. It might seem a little bigger than it really is Jeni :D. Still had to check it wasn't inhabited first though - although the ants would have soon sorted that out. Since then I've noticed a couple more have appeared around the place on the grass and spotted a few more still up in the trees. I was kind of hoping they'd be some sort of native bee hives but I guess I'll have to settle for wasps.

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  2. "Someone's left the cake out in the rain"...

    Lucky it wasn't inhabited - that would have been a little bothersome!

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    Replies
    1. Indeed! We have a lot of wasps around it seems. Thankfully they leave me alone most of the time.

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  3. Amazing! It looks huge!!

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    Replies
    1. Optical illusion I'm afraid but still rather large for a wasp nest. Certainly glad it wasn't inhabited.

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