The spoonfuls of Mango Chutney I ladled onto an old wooden bird feeder a few days ago paid dividends again when out of the blue (yes, literally, the sun was actually out again!) a Hornet Vespa crabro turned up. The largest and most fearsome-looking of the UK’s wasps, the beautiful Hornet is actually no more bold than your average bumblebee and - as the photos below show - are incredibly approachable as long as you don’t jump and down and make ‘threatening’ movements (running at them with a rolled-up newspaper is apparently unwise as well as being unnecessary). For the close-ups below I was literally leaning on the feeder to steady the camera just inches from this wonderful insect’s jaws (wow, I’m brave eh? Of course not - just confident that if I posed no threat I’d be completely safe…)

I may have gone unchallenged, but the Hornet wasn’t so happy to have the two Median Wasps that arrived two days ago (see 2007/07/median-wasp-dol.html for details and photos) sharing the fermenting and frankly stinking syrup of decomposing chutney: the aerial battles were fierce and furious. It was hard to see which won out they were fighting at such high speed, but by the evening the Hornet was still there and the smaller Medians were not (incidentally, I could tell it was the same Hornet that stayed on and off all day as it had lost the middle leg on the right hand side - a disability that didn’t seem to effect the Hornet in any way but that made it very distinctive).

For a really informative and well-illustrated page on Hornets have a look at http://www.muenster.org/hornissenschutz/hornets.htm

Hornet (bottom photo driving off a Median Wasp Dolichovespula media)