UKNatureBlog

There are many unusual wasps and bees in my garden. I swear I see something new every day! I needed to look up this one gnawing the wood off my shed, to find that it is apparently a Median wasp drone, the largest of the UK paper wasps apart from the Hornet. I could hear it scraping the wood and it was definitely a shade bigger than the average wasp. It's quite a sleek thing, being largely black with just the slivers of yellow – a designer wasp perhaps.

Intriguingly that linked page suggests that these wasps can be dissuaded from attacking your picnic with a wave of the arm, whereas that only agitates the more normal UK wasps.

As I returned home this evening I saw that one of the ladybird pupae adorning the inside of my porch had spawned a fresh ladybird, with translucent orange wing cases and just the merest hint of spots. A number of hours later it was looking more typically ladybird-like. I assume it is a Harlequin, owing to the big black ‘M’ on its head and the orange legs. That’s the early and later photos above, with the empty pupae case on the right.

I have seen a few tiny grasshoppers in the back garden recently, generally a sandy colour and less than 1 centimetre long. I'm afraid I don't have a picture (plenty via Google), but I was reading up trying to figure out what they were and I thought it worth sharing. Having spent a while trying to find a very small species of grasshopper I determined that they are in fact grasshopper nymphs (of I don't know what species) which are basically much like the full-sized adults but more 'babyish', with bigger heads in proportion to their bodies.

In general a nymph is an immature invertebrate that looks much like the adult and eventually turns into one via its final moult. This stands in contrast to larvae, which tend to be very different indeed to the adults and go through a pupal stage before emerging in the adult form.