This is the wasp mentioned HERE, that turned up in my kitchen window after others of its kind had emerged from an old mud dauber nest.
I kept this one in a refrigerator overnight so that I might have a chance to get some decent live photos of it.
This wasp had an interesting behavior when chilled. Rather than just becoming quiescent, it fell over and curled up into a tight ball with all of its legs tucked in and its head tucked down. Could have been dead for all I could tell. But it wasn't. By the time I could get the first picture taken, it had started to uncurl. The entire progression in the first montage took 1 minute and 44 seconds. There followed an extended period of crawling around quickly while tapping antennae on the rock and periodically stopping to groom itself. Over 20 minutes went by before it finally flew away.
I was surprised by the posture shown in the third photograph. Clearly this wasp has a lot more flexibility in its front coxae than I do in my shoulders!
The appearance of this individual is notably green, compared to startling blue in the stack that I posted out. This seems to be mostly a matter of individual differences, or possibly dead versus alive. There are some directional effects -- surround lighting from the pingpong ball in the stack really brings out the blue. But when I take the mounted specimen to the same environment as this live one, it still looks primarily blue.
--Rik
Edit: fix name in title and image files.
