Hunting hornets

It has been fascinating to watch the hornets hunting in the warden's garden at the local nature reserve.  They search around the flowers looking for flies, flying fairly slowly.  They look clumsy but are very hard to photograph in flight - these are the best I have managed so far.

The hornets seem to bump into the flowers deliberately, presumably hoping to dislodge a few insects.  Their favourite prey is hoverflies, perhaps because there are so many available.  When a hornet catches a fly it dispatches it immediately but it is so quick that I haven't been able to see whether the fly is crushed, bitten or stung to death.

The hornet hangs from a leaf by its back legs and uses the other legs to hold the fly while it dismembers it, first biting off the head, then removing the legs and wings.

Finally it bites off and discards the fly's abdomen and flies away with the thorax, the only bit worth keeping.  The thorax contains the wings muscles and heart, the meaty bits for feeding to the larvae in the nest.

Here is another sequence.  In the last photo you can see all the discarded fly parts on the leaf below.  The whole thing takes about a minute.

There is usually only one hornet at a time in the garden and perhaps half dozen visit in an hour.  The nest is probably in a hole in a tree somewhere in the woods but we don't know how far away it is.  The number of workers in the nest will continue to increase and will probably peak at a few dozen.  Later this month the queen will start to lay eggs that will produce males and new queens and I am really hoping to see them in the next few weeks.  During the autumn the males and workers all die, leaving the new queens to hibernate before emerging next spring.