August 25: Mysterious mud pod

[neverspent]

Looking for signs of new growth on my tomato plants, I found an amazing and tiny piece of architecture built onto one of the branches of the young maple. It's made of mud, ovoid-spherical in shape, and 14mm long and 8mm wide. (Yes, I took my Disney World ruler out and measured it.) The most interesting part is the hole right in the center of the long side, with a perfectly formed entrance lip right around the hole. I couldn't think of what made this little hidey place. I've watched mud daubers at work before, and they can make that type of thing, but it's usually larger, tube-shaped, multichambered, and located under the eaves of a nice dry, dark barn or shed.



A bit of research turned up the potter wasp, and its nest does look like the one I found. Hello, wasp! Thank you for lending your architecture style to Native Americans for their pottery!

Comments

[phoenix64]

That is really neat, possibly neat enough that were I to see it in person it might overcome my, "Eek, wasp!" reaction.

I also think solitary wasps are kind of interesting, the rebels of their part of the insect family tree.

[neverspent]

I will be keeping my eye out for the wasp, because I like them and I'm curious, but apparently these are "mass feeders." So if everything is as it should be, there's a tiny egg in the nest along with a much larger food source like a caterpillar or spider for the wasp larvae to munch on once it hatches. So no fear, it sounds like you'd be unlikely to see a wasp on one of these unless you happened to catch it when the nest was being built, or the moment the baby emerged (which could be months later, apparently).

I agree about the solitary wasps, too.

[donutsweeper]

I love that you have a Disney World ruler

[neverspent]

:) I've had it for, oh, probably 20 years. A boy in our church who had a crush on me brought it back from Disney World. It's stuck around because it's really a high quality ruler! But the reason I didn't take a picture of the measurements of the wasp nest is because I thought it would look so weird with Daisy Duck next to the mud pod. Heh.