Moulding marvels out of mud
The mayhem caused by Mumbai’s short-sighted planning and foolish pothole counts of the past few days seems to have not affected certain wasps in my home. They roam around the porch roof, windows and especially adore our wind chimes.
Potters belong to a huge clan of wasps commonly known as solitary wasps; you will seldom see several together. Many wasps are super architects, making tunnels in wood, or filling openings like electric sockets with mud creations. The potter wasp’s home is a complex mud structure that looks like a vase, or, well, a pot. Interestingly, the pottery designs of native Americans are said to have been inspired by these nests.
Every few months, I locate a nest or two, and at least one potter wasp in my home loves our old bamboo wind chime. This lady wasp has fallen in love with its natural contours, preferring them over far more promisinglooking nooks and crannies for some five years now.
Yes, the insect I see toiling over this muddy brilliance is a lady, who, after mating, gets involved in domestic chores, ensuring her progeny survive.
She goes to great lengths. Having selected a site, she begins a search for wet mud, possibly even moistening drier soil with bodily secretions. Then she rolls the wet lumps into little glistening balls of ooze that she carries in her legs. In an act of sheer wizardry, she places, pastes and unrolls that wet mud just as a mason would dabble with sand and cement during plastering.
It’s no wonder potter wasps are also called mason wasps. I have watched her make up to 30 visits with mud pellets over one pot-nest, the exercise extending over three days until an enchanting vase-like creation emerges. And there is still some major work pending. Like the laying of an egg, or eggs, for starters.
These wasps lead a dual existence. The adults are largely nectar feeders but their young (larvae) are carnivorous. So, with her nest near-complete, off goes the mother wasp on a hunt to feed her future young. I see her hovering, charging, probing as she looks out for caterpillars and grubs, the larvae of butterflies and beetles. Occasionally she even hunts adult spiders.
She paralyses her catch with her venom and carries it to the nest, where a single egg may be suspended from a thread-like secretion attached to a craftily carved lid she has made to close the ‘pot’. And the baby wasp, on hatching, has an instant, juicy feast to help it reach pupation stage. What a silent drama!
There’s marvellous architecture in several other solitary wasps. The papier-mâché-like nests made by the paper wasps from chewed plant fibres and saliva are a revelation too. But nothing can compete with the enormous affair I once discovered at Mumbai’s national park, 3 ft and more of it, dangling on the giant branch of a forest tree. It was the exquisite creation of one of the Vespa wasps.
(Sunjoy Monga is a naturalist, photographer and author of numerous books on biodiversity)