Great Golden Digger Wasp
Sphex ichneumoneus
Great Golden Digger Wasp · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 26 July 2026
A Great Golden Digger Wasp on the flowers in the July border, one of the more distinctive large wasps of eastern gardens and meadows, and a solitary hunter that digs its nest in bare soil.
Orange legs and a two-tone abdomen, black at the base and reddish-orange behind it. Like its relative the Great Black Wasp, this is a hunter rather than a colonial defender: females dig a burrow, stock it with paralysed katydids or crickets, and lay a single egg on the provisions before sealing the chamber and moving on.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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