Remember the large hornet’s nest that was hanging on the edge of our carport? The hornets had all left to burrow into the ground to over-winter, but I thought I would just keep the nest hanging there, because a friend had told me that if it remained, then next summer the hornets would not come there again, and build their nest somewhere else.
However yesterday, when I walked onto the carport, I saw many little paper-like pieces of the nest all over the floor, and when I checked the nest I saw that two big holes had been made in it. I assume it was a bird that was checking to see if there was anything to eat inside it. With the nest ruined, I took it down and was going to put it on the compost pile.
Before I did that, I started to rip it apart, and was a fascinated at the inner structure of the thing. Inside there were four plater-like layers for the nesting cylinders of decreasing size, that were held together by a central stem. It was an incredible nature-built piece of architecture. It seemed like it would quite a feat to build such a thing in the dark, inside the nest, but I guess hornets have been perfecting their building for millions of years.
No comments:
Post a Comment