Matt Cole's Wildlife Photography

Some interesting insect behaviour caught my eye in my garden recently. While standing near a flowering Jasmine I was suddenly aware of a frantic buzzing sound and noticed that a hoverfly that had been feeding on a Jasmine flower was being attacked by a wasp. The wasp was grappling with the hoverfly but the hoverfly was putting up a fight (scroll down for images, all taken with a Panasonic FZ30 and Raynox DCR150 close-up lens).

To my surprise, the wasp's next tactic was to start biting the hoverfly's 'neck', as can be seen below:

The most gruesome part was to follow. The hoverfly's proboscis seemed to be firmly anchored within the Jasmine flower so the wasp simply severed the hoverfly's head, leaving it still attached to the flower, and flew off with the body. Gruesome indeed.

To add insult to injury, a few minutes later a wasp, maybe the same one, returned to the Jasmine flower, grabbed the hoverfly's head and flew off with it!