sick

Have you ever wanted to see inside a wasp nest?



There you go.
(For some reason I don't get the fancy resize-link thing everyone else gets, so you can see the entire image in my albums.)

I discovered this beauty as I was working in the yard this weekend. I didn't know it was there as I was working, so I'm lucky I wasn't stung.

Anyway, they built it right up against a window, and I realized that if I moved the window covering aside, I could see inside. Pretty cool, huh?

I don't think they know I'm watching them; to them the window is just like any other wall, so they didn't bother to close it off on the window side. Their vision is shifted toward the UV, and glass blocks most UV light. While a window is transparent to us, it's opaque to them*.

Again, pretty cool.

And I can watch them without actually getting too close. While I'm not afraid of them exactly, I prefer they not get too close. They're stingy.


*My hypothesis, anyway. I have yet to test it.