The monstrous beauty

[Prajwal J Ullal]

ID: Vespa tropica(Greater banded hornet)

One of the many beauties frequenting this particular wet patch of the trail, this one probably seemed to be injured, which eventually led us to get some decent frames. While we tried our best to frame some of the earlier beauties, that took a short break to quench off the thirst by having a sip into the flowing water stream, we tried to maintain a safe distance from these notorious behemoths, atleast based on the warnings my expert friends have shared, but these just flew off on realizing our presence. But this particular one, which initially seemed to be hunting on the ground, looking for something underneath the leaves that had fallen off due to the winter in-surge, but something seemed off as it hardly flew off and rather kept moving away and deeper into the ground, laid out with leaves. After sometime though, it did come out and this time kept on climbing onto the twigs that popped out off the ground and took short flights from the tip of the twig to the neighboring one. Its during this consistent movement that it took a shorted break to clean itself up, probably from the dust that was all around, and again continued to move, at even swifter rate, to disappear into the denser bits of the trail.

EXIF:
Canon 80D
Canon 100mm macro
F/18
Shutter speed 1/125
ISO 640
Kept on ground, In built flash fired

Location: Nagla trail

[Mrudul Godbole]

Very interesting and detailed observations. Good details. The narrow aperture and high ISO has helped. The low angle strengthens the composition further. Thanks for sharing.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

This is a nice one. Looks like you could move in close. Agree about the low angle as well. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi