So much of appreciation and enjoyment these days is because of magnification. This little dot stuck to my sunshade would have been ignored if not for a zoom lens and/or a pair of binoculars.
I hope my friend Katy reads this - binoculars are useful for so many things - from ancient architecture to creatures small or distant.
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| And this is the dot - with a zoom lens! Or what I see through my binoculars. Ropalidia variegata |
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| See the pedicel - by which it has attached to our sunshade, and the 3 cells, so far. It appears that two have eggs and one is unoccupied. |
This paper wasp variety is pretty harmless, so don't be scared of these brown and yellow critters. They usually build nests under leaves, but nowadays many seem to hand from pigeon nets and sunshades.
There is more attention given to R. marginata, for some reason. Maybe their nests are bigger, and Gadagkar of IISc has chosen to study them! We need someone to do the same for R.variegata.
Maybe my friend Hrishu will - he's on the leaderboard for the species.
More on this nest and wasp in the weeks to come.
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