Stamped: October 14th, 2007

This critter crawled out from under our fridge. I was pretty scared of him at first, but at that point I had him mistaken for a huge fly (I’ve seen ‘em this size in the South Island). He’s not a fly.

video of our lovely specimen

Fired the pics off to my auntie (an entomologist with hortresearch), she asked Jo Berry (Aotearoa’s hymenoptera expert), who told us it’s a spider-hunting wasp, and we should set him free and let the spiders take their chances.

Best of luck to them all, I say!

• Update: Te Ara calls this wasp a “Large Black Hunter”. Cool!