Отрывок из книги
George W. Peckham, E. G. Peckham
Published by Good Press, 2019
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O. quadrinotatus is only one-quarter of an inch long, and is dark gray with four whitish spots on the abdomen. It was before nine o’clock in the morning that, while out on an early inspection tour in the garden, we saw one of these wasps descend upon a sandy spot, and after a moment’s rapid scratching with her first legs enter the hole that she had opened. Under her body she was carrying a fly which looked like the common domestic species. It was upside down, its head being tightly clasped with the third pair of legs, and all of its abdomen projected beyond the abdomen of the wasp. Ashmead quotes from Fabre the remarkable statement that Oxybelus carries her flies home impaled on her sting, an idea that probably arose from the fact that nearly the whole body of the fly is visible.
Our new-found wasp stayed only a moment in her nest, although, as we afterward found, it was long enough for her to lay her egg on the fly. When she came out she quickly smoothed the sand over the spot with her head and legs so that there was nothing to mark the nest, and flew away. In three minutes she returned with another fly. She alighted two or three inches away, and scratched for an instant, but quickly saw her mistake, and found the right spot.
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