I did try to attract some night moths again last night, but not much interesting showed up. But then this wonderful parasitic wasp was attracted by the light and posed for me.
A parasitic wasp callled Ophion Obscuratis.
Yesterday, the weather predictions for the night were rather good, with hardly any rain predicted. So I decided to set up my LED moth trap again. But it turned out that the predictions were wrong and during the first half of the night there was a lot of rain. Fortunately I put it under some cover, but this was not good for attracting moths. So in the end there were just a handful, some December Moths and a The Sprawler, both of which species I had seen before in the past few days.
But there was one surprise visitor, a parasitic wasp of the species Ophion Obscuratis. It turns out they fly all winter and lay their eggs in the caterpillars of night moths. This is a beautiful wasp with a orange body and a yellow head around big black eyes. It has almost transparent wings. It did not move much, so I managed to get a good close-up shot of the head, where you can also see its three ocelli, which are simple additional eyes at the top of her head. It was a female cause only these fly this time of the year.
The second overview shot was a lot harder to take. She was sitting on the glass of the moth trap and there was all sorts of stuff shining through it or being reflected in it. I had to do a lot of cleaning up in the image to make it acceptable.
On a side note, I now added all the butterflies and moths I saw this year to this site. Only 400 other insects left to go.
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