Caught in the act

[Prajwal J Ullal]

ID: Cuckoo wasp laying its egg on another insects' eggs

Came across this tiny beauty perched on top of some really jagged edged eggs. Had read or seen photos of other people mentioning that these are notoriously known for laying their eggs on other species' eggs, but this time I could, under the high magnification, capture that moment, or something similar to it. The tail of the wasp seem to have some translucent globe of liquid, am guessing it to be the actual eggs, which it seemed to transmit deep into the egg cluster. The interesting fact was that, almost 8 days later, I could spot, the same or another, cuckoo wasp laying eggs again n the same cluster of eggs.

EXIF:
Canon 550D
Canon 100mm macro + Raynox DCR 250
F/10
Shutterspeed 1/200
ISO 200
Internal flash fired
Slightly cropped(20% reduction in frame)
Location: Nagla trail

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Interesting act. Glad that you could find it. Looks a bit soft. Have you done any noise reduction or some such processing? Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Mrudul Godbole]

Interesting. I think as its behavior is similar to a Cuckoo, it is called Cuckoo Wasp. The edged eggs form a nice pattern. Nicely captured. Thanks for sharing.

[Roshni Patel]

This is wonderful. Like the way the act has been captured is really great. Thanks for sharing!