Eastern Cicada Killer
Sphecius speciosus · Bees & wasps
Eastern Cicada Killer
Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, 3 August 2025
An Eastern Cicada Killer pausing on cottonwood leaves at Jamaica Bay in early August, which is its season, timed to the cicadas. Cicada killers nest in sandy ground across the eastern United States, and the bay's sand is ideal for the burrows. Not the Great Golden Digger Wasp it was first written up as.
The black abdomen with its pale yellow marks, the rust-red thorax and legs and the amber wings are the cicada killer's; a digger wasp carries orange on the front half of the abdomen, and this one has none. Among the largest wasps in the East. The female hunts annual cicadas, stings one into paralysis, and hauls it - heavier than she is - back to a burrow where it will feed a single larva. For all the size they are not interested in people, and the males, which patrol the burrows noisily, cannot sting at all.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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