While we were away

Our front porch doesn't see a lot of activity in July and August. It's simply too hot to spend much time there, unless you're our resident front-porch skink. Better to spend the cool mornings on the shaded, screened, back porch. So I shouldn't have been surprised when I saw something on one of the front porch chairs.

Obviously no one had been sitting in this chair much if the mud daubers had time to build such a large nest. This species is called the organ-pipe mud dauber, for obvious reasons. This is what a more typical nest looks like:

This nest has been there for a while and the young have emerged. They're not serious pests and they prey on black-widow spiders, so I usually leave them alone. But I must confess to destroying the one on the chair.