Cicada killer wasp

[Kingcreek]

I was working out behind the barn yesterday digging a couple post holes (for new target frames for my pistol range) and I saw something really weird and pretty cool. Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera/phone on me.
This HUGE wasp (2+" long) was flying around carrying a cicada as big as my thumb. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphecius_speciosus It would frequently stop and land and appear to sting the cicada before taking off with it again.
It seemed to want to be where I was so I gave it plenty of space. The I figured out it had a ground nest hole in my berm which was its destination.
I don't know how common they are but it was pretty interesting and I eventually got my posts set and she eventually got her cicada stashed.

[freakazoid]

Interesting. I think I might of seen one before. I remember it was really huge and looked like that.

[charby]

Only the females have stingers. Males are harmless but grab one and scare the *expletive deleted*it out of people.

Luckily their season is very short. I miss the perpetual nesting location at my old house, great entertainment watching the female kill cicadas and drag them back to the nest to feed next years offspring.

[K Frame]

When I was with the newspaper back in 1989-1990 we got a call in the newsroom from a guy who had found one.

He had no clue what it was, and no one else did (apparently they're fairly uncommon in that area of Pennsylvania).

I did some research in the local library and determined it was a Cicada Killer. Never seen anything like it before, and it made for an interesting article.

I've seen them a few times here in Virginia. Damned creepy.

[Kingcreek]

If only I had been able to get some video or pics of the actual abduction and murder of the cicada...
It wasn't aggressive, she just wanted to get her victim into the nest. But when I first encountered her I was cautious because I wasn't sure and it was definitely the biggest honkin wasp I ever did see. Lucky for her, the nest hole is in the berm between 2 target frames and not in the LOF directly behind any.

[MechAg94]

I don't recall ever seeing one though we have lots of cicadas in these parts.  I thought I would have noticed burrows like that dug out.  I wouldn't be surprised if fire ants keep their numbers down. 

[Regolith]

So, a fluffier version of Tarantula Hawk, huh?

[BryanP]

Those things are very cool.  My wife and I were walking in the park a couple of years back and got to witness one swoop down and take a cicada right in front of us. 

[Fly320s]

Those cicada killers are intersting:

http://www.cicadamania.com/cicadas/10-facts-about-cicada-killer-wasps/

[Jocassee]

These are super cool. When I was a kid, we lived on a hill across from a stand of huge poplars that towered above a creek bottom. In the summer the trees were thick with cicadas. The wasps had a burrow underneath our driveway (which I was terrified of). But a couple times I saw them on a long glide from the top of the poplars, loaded down with a cicada, down and across to land right in front of the burrow.

A variation on these wasps paralyzes rain spiders in South Africa, drags them across the ground, and buries them in loose dirt. Saw that in action once as well. The rain spider is a tarantula type thing.

Click for NOPE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pSK1lbtzLg