a cuckoo in the nest?

When I posted an update on the activities of a wasp on my balcony ten days ago, I did so in the belief that there would be nothing more to report. I should have known better!

Two days after my previous report, I noticed that a fourth ‘pod’ was under construction, directly above the second and third ‘pods’:

The wasp quickly finished its work without my catching it in action:

Unlike the wasp’s practice regarding the earlier ‘pods’, it appeared to be in no hurry to seal up the entrance hole of its latest creation. However, three days after I took the previous photo, Paula and I were sitting on the balcony after returning from a long bike ride when the wasp reappeared with a caterpillar about 3cm in length dangling from its jaws. Paula had her phone with her and took the following sequence of photos, which shows the wasp laboriously working the caterpillar through the entrance hole:

The entrance hole was then quickly sealed:

Incidentally, I conjecture that each of the three earlier ‘pods’ also contains a live caterpillar, but we weren’t around to see the action.

The following day, I spotted the beginnings of a fifth ‘pod’:

…but something strange appears to have been happening in the interim. Notice the dark area on top of the fourth ‘pod’. I had previously noticed two dark spots there, which the wasp appeared to have repaired, followed by a much larger dark spot, also repaired. (The photos I took were seriously out of focus, unfortunately.)

Around this time, I’d been reading an article in Smithsonian Magazine with the title ‘Interesting Insects’. This is an extract:

Cuckoo wasps live up to their name by laying their eggs in the nests of bees and wasps. [The species being discussed] specifically specializes in the clay nests of potter wasps. The young cuckoo wasp eats the nest’s rightful occupant and its food store.

So our guest is a potter wasp. And although the species discussed in the article is found only in Europe and West Asia, I couldn’t help but wonder whether skullduggery of this kind had been taking place here with a different cuckoo wasp species. Construction of the fifth ‘pod’ appears to have been abandoned, although there could be other reasons for this. However, I’m not going to predict that there will be no further developments here. At the very least, we have the emergence of young wasps to look forward to, although I’ve no idea when that will be.