Yesterday I shared some photos of a cicada.  In my neck of the woods, they are prey for a great many things, but most importantly they represent the entire foundation of survival for the colony of cicada-killer wasps (Sphecius speciosus) that lives and dies each year right outside my front door.  And this year is no different.

A few weeks ago I spoke of the returning of these behemoths.  I said then “I suspect I will see the pinnacle of their numbers within the next few weeks.”  It has been a few weeks and there are now dozens of them buzzing around from the front door to the back patio, flying fortresses in the wasp world who easily overshadow their cousins by leaps and bounds when it comes to size.

I will endeavor to capture more photos and videos of these gentle giants (or, at least in the case of the males, harmless yet aggressive giants).  However, the crunch on my time has greatly hindered my usual jaunts through nature’s splendor.

Nevertheless, yesterday I was surprised to get at least a small glimpse of something I’d never seen before.

Morning sunlight hurried to pour over me on what already was a warm and muggy day.  Even in shorts and a light tank top, sweat beaded upon my brow and threatened to blind me as I stood in the midst of aerial bombardment and acrobatics.  My favorite insects were everywhere.  Males gave chase to anything that moved, including me and some of the neighborhood cats, not to mention cottonwood seeds floating by on lazy breezes, while females whizzed by with only breaths between us as they hurried about the hunting of cicadas.

Let me mention the women folk of this brood are enormous, as I’ve mentioned before, and their strength undoubtedly is many times that of more common wasps such as hornets, dirt and mud daubers, paper wasps, and yellow jackets.  Despite their mass of predatory power, I can only imagine the serious business involved with towing a paralyzed cicada back to the nest.  If I don’t get out of their way as they approach, they have no choice but to run right into me.  Relatively speaking, the cicada probably weighs more than the wasp because of its bulky body, so she has her work cut out for her already with ensuring its safe transport.  That leaves little time or energy to focus on quick maneuvers to get around dumb humans who don’t know any better.

But this story is not about getting hit by the males on several occasions yesterday, or even about the one instance where I didn’t move quickly enough as a female approached and subsequently got thwacked on the left shoulder as be rebounded off me (and yes, she still managed to get her prize to the nest that was behind me, although I can’t imagine I helped much by standing there like a dumb rock).

Nay, poppets, this post is about passion.  Or at least procreation.

And it’s also about comparison.

With the sun almost ready to spring over the trees and blanket me, where it no doubt would certainly burn me to a cinder, my attention suddenly became diverted with some buzzing hoopla taking place near my feet.  I glanced down and at first thought I was witnessing a real tussle between two males whose encounter had gone from aerial fisticuffs to an all-out brawl.

But closer inspection revealed only one was a male.  He was holding tightly to the back of a female, a creature that dwarfed even his large frame.  And she did not appear to be happy about it.

I could not for the life of me determine why he would be so violently attacking her, especially with his prodding her as though trying to sting despite not having a stinger.  Then it hit me.

This rough-and-tumble scene could be nothing less than a mating encounter.  So I set about trying to capture some images.

Which was not easy at all.  They rolled about, curled up in a ball that never remained still, she buzzed across the grass and concrete with him in tow, and I found myself amazed to see her dragging the two of them more than a yard (a meter) across the ground as she struggled with his constant badgering advances.

Yet perhaps that is precisely how they copulate.  Perhaps it is with them as it is with most spiders: a dangerous proposition, but one necessary to keep the species alive.

So I knelt on the ground and attempted to take some pictures of the event.  Not an easy task, I’ll tell you.  On that scale, macro is really the best way to go, yet macro is not the easiest photography method when dealing with a rapidly moving object.  Each time I got focused on them, they moved.  So I’d follow and do it over again, only to have them move some more.

Out of almost four dozen images captured, I walked away with fewer than a handful that offered anything other than a blur of motion or an out-of-focus mass of something or other.

And having to be within inches of this violent scene frightened me, what with my severe allergy to wasp stings and all.  Keep in mind I already was in the middle of their nesting ground, the one place where females will be aggressive on a regular basis if interfered with, and there I was on all fours invading the personal space of one female who was quite busy with her mate—whether voluntarily or otherwise.  And all the while, the entire space around me remained filled with the comings and goings of other females, and the bombing and strafing runs of significantly more males—dozens of them, in fact.  I was hit many times by these masculine attackers, and several times I had to duck or weave to avoid being the point of impact for an inbound queen buzzing through with a cicada weighing her down.

All of these photos were captured in sequence as the wasps happened to have just fallen off the concrete onto the ground cover.  It was the only spot where they remained in one place long enough for me to get close, get focused, and snap some pictures.  As you’ll see from the last one in the sequence, they began to move again by that point, and she dragged the two of them a few feet away (slightly less than a meter) until finally they disappeared under a bush—where I wasn’t going to follow as it was in the middle of Wasp Avenue.  Besides, digging around under there during their private moment seemed the best way to get stung.

You can see he’s on her back.  You can also see the significant size difference, especially evident with their wings, not to mention their abdomens (although his is slightly obscured by his wings).

That’s an even better comparison of scale as you can more clearly see his length and overall size compared to her.  No wonder he wants to be on top.  If she ever got him into a submissive position, he’d be in real trouble.  And don’t forget she’s armed while he is not.

Although I realize that one is blurry because they had already started their forward motion toward the bush, movement heavily punctuated with quite a bit of buzzing and rolling about, I think that image provides the best comparison of their size difference.  Just look at her head compared to his, let alone her entire body.  Remember she was more than two inches (5 centimeters) long and at least half an inch (1.25 centimeters) wide, although I’m only estimating since I didn’t exactly pull out a ruler and ask her for her measurements.  For comparison, keep in mind the queens are as long as North America’s largest cicadas from tip of head to tip of wing, although they do not sport the same body girth as their prey.

And lest you think me a pervert for focusing solely on a sexual series of images, let me share one more taken a bit later.

I saw a queen loitering about the patio and stepped outside to take some pictures if an opportunity arose.  I believe she was busy looking for a nest site as she buzzed around the edges of the concrete, investigated every little nook and cranny, and dug around in the undergrowth and ground cover.  She never stayed still for more than a second or two.  Don’t think I didn’t try for some macro close-ups, though, for I did.  She didn’t cooperate with that quest.

Finally, when I thought I’d never get her to sit still long enough for even one shot, she flew through the fence and landed in the corner.  She sat on the ground for a smidgen of time longer than she had elsewhere, so I was able to get a high-speed image of her.

The moment the flash went off, she leaped into the air, flew around me for a moment, then vanished over the fence and around the corner.

[I’m such an idiot; I wrote the original Dying alone intending to post it with the photos seen in this post; now more than four months later, I’ve only just realized I never posted the photos; oops; the text below is a minor rewrite of the original post; all photos are of the same male cicada-killer wasp (Sphecius speciosus) taken over the course of two days; I couldn’t find him on the third day or any day that followed it and could only assume his time had ended]

He is the last of his kind.  I wonder if he at all realizes that in the vastness of his universe that encompasses such a small part of my own, he is utterly and completely without a clan.  It is a wretched curse for one so small.

He stands guard ready to challenge other males of his species.  There will be no such challenges for there are no other males.  He is the sole remaining example of these gargantuans.  Diligent in his resolve to protect his space from enemies, those enemies will never come.  He is the lone sentry from a generation of sentries that already perished.

He hopes to propagate his species, to continue the family line with available females.  There are no such females.  The last one died earlier today.  If he did not mate before then, he will never have another opportunity.  His lifetime is now one of aloneness.

He protects the now sleeping children, the last traces of his generation, and the offspring of his colony.  They are children he will never know and will never see.  Safely entombed in the ground, they will sleep for a year before taking up the dance he alone dances.  These children will never know their parents as these parents will never know their children, and yet he does not waver in his resolve.

He is the last bastion of a dying race whose hopes rest solely in the ground he surveys from time to time as he answers his own genetic programming by still giving chase to anything that floats or flies by him.  Because there are no others, he wrestles only with time as he awaits his own end.

There are no witnesses save himself who know of the life and death struggle of his kin, the members of this vast settlement who have already expended what little time they had on this planet.  With so many burrows scattered about, one can only hope he shared in the brief tumult that is their existence.  He will never have another chance.

He is heartbreakingly alone now.  There will be no others before he dies.  The purpose of his life can no longer be fulfilled, so he stands on his own waiting for death to embrace him.  He will die alone much unlike the rest of his kind; instead, they faced death in the company of others, something he can only dream of.

Watching him patrol a territory now devoid of his species, I wonder if he is lonely.  Perhaps I am projecting human emotions onto this creature.  Perhaps.  One cannot help but feel isolation and solitude when looking at him.  I sit and watch him as we both bake in the simmering heat and unending sunshine of a Texas summer.  Part of me wishes I could help him in some way, make him feel that his final days are not unnoticed, help him see the promise of progeny tucked away all around us.

But I cannot tell him such things just as I cannot make him comprehend the magnitude of the situation.  He must face this on his own.

Seeing his last days in the barren landscape that once gave rise to a great many of his siblings causes me to feel for him insomuch as his last moments will be solitary.  I do not know how much longer he can survive, but I do know he will spend these final days waiting for death, and the wait will stand upon its emptiness, and when death finally comes, he will face it here in this place where so many have already come and gone before, this place where he must already understand to some small degree that he is by himself.

He watches me as I watch him.  I am now able to get close enough that I can see his head moving to follow my actions.  A part of me weeps for him.  It was only a few weeks ago that the air and ground all about me were filled with these goliaths.  It was only a few days ago that others of his kind still came and went.  It was just yesterday that the last remaining female arrived to finalize her nest, her hope for future generations, before she finally left never again to return alive but instead to be discovered by me near her burrow with all the life drained from her body.

And now he is alone.  Alone waiting for his own death.  It is the same unstoppable end responsible for wiping out everyone he ever knew.  He is alone.  Just alone.  And that is how he will die.

He is the last of his kind.

Cicadas sing from the trees in a growing declaration that summer is upon us.  Who doesn’t think of summertime when these insects start their annual rise and fall.  Their emergence from underground dwellings also heralds the arrival of summer predators that keep these tree killers in check.  I’ve grown increasingly fascinated with one such predator: the cicada-killer wasp.  Part of that intrigue is borne of convenience as a significant colony of these enormous flyers lives just outside my home.  This provides me with extensive opportunity to watch and interact with them.  Because the males have no stinger and generally just hang around all day, I see them more often than the females who are busy hunting, digging underground burrows, and preparing next year’s wasp population.

Several times per day, at least one of the females will perform a cursory inspection of the patio.  The males simply use it as their road-rage empowering aviation highway; they zoom through at tremendous speeds giving chase to other males, and at times large groups of them sweep through in a fit of territorial guardianship.  I have even seen them give chase to other kinds of wasps and flying insects, not to mention cottonwood tufts and other plant material inadvertently swept into their airspace, but these chases are generally abrupt and short once they realize they’re not chasing one of their kind.  It’s extremely captivating, and my growing interest has become educational as I try to learn more about these benign yet very intimidating giants.

The females, the larger of the two genders, reach at least 2 inches (5 centimeters) in length and are as big around as my pinkie.  They dwarf yellow jackets, hornets, red wasps, and dirt daubers (and all the rest of those dangerous little creatures) by orders of magnitude.  You can see a photo on this page that shows them along with a fly and another wasp (there is also a hornet hidden behind one of the cicada-killers).  The photo is just below the four species photos at the top.  While you’re there, take a look at the four species photos and find the bottom-right entry for Sphecius speciosus, which is the same species as my neighborhood friends.  They are one of the largest wasps.

Despite my efforts to do so, I have yet to get photos of them on my hand or other body part (if they land somewhere unexpected).  That would provide some scale, but the males are too jittery with so many other males around, and the females have too much to do to stay around long enough.  I’ll keep trying…

In the meantime, I’ve put together a small collection of some of the photos I’ve grabbed thus far.  Because they’re wasps and fly and dart about with abandon, picture quality in some cases is not as good as I would like simply because the first picture didn’t work out and the wasp flew away before I could snap another.  Still, I think you’ll see why I find these creatures so fascinating and, to be certain, just very cool.