potter wasp

July 19, 2016

Dave Bonta July 19, 2016 1

In the bright sun, three potter wasps are raiding the bergamot blossoms, piercing the base of each purple tube to drain the nectar.

Dave Bonta July 24, 2015

A wasp flying in low sunlight: hind legs dangling bright orange, and behind her thin waist the black, banded abdomen shaped like a bomb.

Dave Bonta July 23, 2012 1

A sleek black-and-yellow potter wasp is visiting the bergamot, biting a hole in the base of each drooping floret to suck the nectar.

November 23, 2023
Blue-gray layered with yellow-orange a half hour past sunrise. The creek is still singing about Tuesday’s rain, and the one oak at the woods’ edge…
November 23, 2022
I look up from my phone: another perfect day. Tree shadows on the snow stretch from the woods’ edge to the porch. Doves flutter up…
November 23, 2021
Clear and cold. Two nuthatches trade riffs at the edge of the woods. I watch the rising sun crest the ridge one blazing filament at…
November 23, 2020
Cold with a clearing wind. The now nearly leafless lilac fills with juncos and chickadees. Nuthatches on adjacent trees exchange notes.
November 23, 2019
Clouds slowly vanish in the blue—like my own puffs of breath, but slower. Chickadees; a nuthatch. The forest floor goes from glow to shine.