It’s a mystery!

We are blessed this year with a veritable cornucopia of hummingbirds!

Never have I seen so many of the adorable little creatures in our yard. Never has the garden hummed so to the rhythm of their tiny beating wings. Never has the nectar level in my feeders declined at such a precipitate rate!

I’m not at all sure that I can afford to maintain the standard of living to which these perky little chaps have clearly become accustomed… The feeders need replenishing every other day. The sugar bills are horrendous!

Nonetheless…

This post is not actually concerned with the birds themselves. It is about the feeders – or one of them anyway. I bring them both in to clean and to refill at the same point, regardless of whether or not they are each quite empty. When I brought this one in there was still about an inch of nectar in the bottom of it.

There was also – a live wasp!

The mystery is – how on earth did it get in there? The only channels into the glass chamber that holds the nectar are those at the bottom through which the birds sup the fluid. These cannot be more than 1.5mm – 2mm across and are – presumably – full of the sweet sticky water of which the birds cannot get enough. I don’t see how the insect could have entered whilst I was filling the feeder – certainly not without being noticed – and I saw that it was there before I had opened the chamber today.

As I say – a total mystery!

The answer to the question – “What was a wasp doing in your hummingbird feeder?” – is, however, in this case quite literally – “The backstroke!“.

I’m here all week folks!