Next hike starts from Van Anda this week.

The next hike will be on Saturday, 25th November.

We meet at the Canadian Legion in Van Anda at 10:00am.

I'm in the process of getting my eyes upgraded with bionic lenses and I'm not allowed to hike among other things until my eyes have fully recovered from the surgery.  I'm very pleased with the result so far as one eye now lets me see the world around me again in the vivid colours that had been missing for quite a few years. 

My photo this week is one I took earlier in the year on a botanical excursion to the Mt. Davies area.  It took me a while to figure out what kind of insect it was, but from its behaviour and appearance I thought it must be some kind of wasp.  It's related to those harmless wasps that often build mud nests on buildings and collect spiders to store for their young to feed on.  This kind, the Thread-waisted Wasp, searches for caterpillars which it injects with a special poison that turns it's prey into a kind of zombie.  Instead of mud nests it uses short burrows in the ground where it lays a single egg on the living food reserve before carefully blocking up the entrance to the hole. 

JD.  

Thread-waisted wasp, Mount Davies, July 2017. A solitary wasp that is eating a mosquito in my photo, but it feeds it's young on caterpillars.