Spider and Wasp

[shenk1]

Sometimes wasps are on the receiving end of unwanted attention



But.....

Let a fly out of the bathroom window today and a wasp came out of nowhere,plucked out of the air Sparrowhawk style and sat on the edge of the window eating it. Amazing to see

[nursiebernard]

i am sure it was

[wilippa]

These pictures remind me of an encounter I witnessed in my garden recently. Exactly the same scenario - A. diadematus versus wasp - except I couldn't work out who was winning! Think it might have been the spider though. I did have one spider living on my lavender plant that ate bees - that made me kind of sad. Funny that bees seem so much more cuddly than wasps.

[Geoff F]

I have witnessed a slightly different version of this scene. A couple of wasps stealing prey from a spider's web. They chased the spider away then neatly cut the web to remove the prey which they carried off.

But a large Araneus diadematus in my greenhouse was eating a wasp yesterday.

For me, it's only the Common Wasp (and close relations) which get little sympathy, all the other wasp species are fine, including hornets.

But even the Common Wasp has a place in the general environment and they don't cause me any problems unless I accidentally annoy them.

[Nick Smith]

I have some photo's of a similar nature, wasp is the meal, taken last week.

I also have some from last year where a wasp went into a web to steal a dragonfly that the spider was about to make a meal of. The wasp severed the juicy front end and flew off with it, then a few minutes later came back for the body, cutting the wings off and leaving them hanging in the web. The body was still attached to the web while the wasp hung to it and neatly folded it into a ball then wrestled with it until finally detatching it from the web, meanwhile the spider was hiding somewhere well out of the way



Interesting viewing.