Earthy cottages - Mud dauber style

Our first tendency is to shrink away from creepy crawlies, but there is no mistaking that nature’s creatures are awesome. The mud daubers are hornets—that don’t usually sting—from either the family Sphecidae or Crabronidae that build their nests from mud.

You could come back to a spot in your home in a couple of days to find that a mud dauber has shifted base here. To start her nest, the female mud dauber finds a shady site with a supply of the right kind of mud. She usually visits two or more sites to collect mud, which means the mud tubes, can have different colors depending on the type of soil used. She rolls bits of soft mud into a small ball that is held between her front legs as she flies off.

At the nest site, she presses the mud ball into position using her head and mandibles, smoothing it out with her saliva to shape it into a short tube with several sealed chambers inside, each containing larva and spiders for the young to feed on.