2009 Insects

By far the greatest number of creatures that you’ll find in your Backyard Zoo will be insects – ants, flies, mosquitoes, bees, bugs, beetles, butterflies, crickets, grasshoppers and more. This is because your backyard is a small slice of the world at large, which insects and other invertebrates have ruled for hundreds of millions of years.

Yesterday, I stumbled across this large European hornet struggling to hold on to a day lily leaf. It seemed like odd behavior to me, but it gave me the opportunity to photograph this creature in a somewhat unusual pose.

The European hornet is a large, aggressive member of the yellow-jacket family that was introduced to the United States in 1840. The first records of its presence come from New York, but its range now extends westward as far as the Dakotas and south as far as Florida and Louisiana. European hornets build large paper nests that tend to be located in tree cavities, not suspended from branches like nests of the bald-faced hornet. A typical colony will harbor several hundred workers.

It’s not likely that you’ll find the nest in your backyard, as these insects fly over great distances to find food. Prey species include crickets, grasshoppers, flies, butterfly and moth caterpillars, and even other yellow-jackets, hornets and wasps. Some people regard European hornets as pests, especially on summer and autumn evenings when these scary nocturnal predators are drawn to porch lights in search of an easy insect meal. Although hornets can deliver a painful sting, you need not consider them dangerous. Just back away a step or two and observe them from a short distance.