Red Banded Sand Wasp

Ammophila sabulosa

Red Banded Sand Wasp (Ammophila sabulosa)
Image: Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA, wikipedia

Ammophila sabulosa, the red-banded sand wasp, is a species of the subfamily Ammophilinae of the solitary hunting wasp family Sphecidae, also called digger wasps. Found across Eurasia, the parasitoid wasp is notable for the mass provisioning behaviour of the females, hunting caterpillars mainly on sunny days, paralysing them with a sting, and burying them in a burrow with a single egg. The species is also remarkable for the extent to which females parasitise their own species, either stealing prey from nests of other females to provision their own nests, or in brood parasitism, removing the other female's egg and laying one of her own instead. Source

Where it is now

No records in the last 8 weeks. It may be out of season where the observers and sensors are.

See the Red Banded Sand Wasp on the live map

Arrival dates

The week it was first heard regularly in each region, after at least six weeks away. Dates differ from south to north, so a region has a range.

RegionFirst arrivalLast arrivalTypical peakAreas
Europe1 June 20261 June 202622 June 20261

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Figures are effort corrected and come from automatic sound identification, which makes mistakes. How this is measured and how it compares with human observers.