Something was moving very quickly across the ground, stopping, and rushing on again. I peered closely. It was long and slim, black, with long narrow wings: the graceful, powerful body of a small solitary wasp. But this one had very long legs - at least twice as long as a common wasp's, for its size. It was not visiting flowers, though. What was it up to? It seemed to be searching for something I couldn't see on the bare sandy ground, littered here and there with broken twigs and small pebbles among the shoots of heather and willowherb.
Suddenly the little wasp went into a flurry of activity. The insect seemed to whirl in the air - it was with something at least as big as itself! The thing was round, plump, short - its exact opposite: legs and wings flashed in all directions: a furious fight was in progress! For a few more seconds, limbs blurred in the brilliant sunshine like Astérix the Gaul running on Magic Potion to defeat the cartoon Romans.
Then, as suddenly as it began, it was all over. A fat spider hung limply from the little wasp's jaws, paralysed by her sting. Now she - clearly a Pompilid Spider-Hunting Wasp - was in command. Without further ado she began to run, dragging her massive prey rapidly backwards, her long legs making short work of the burden on the rough ground.
I gathered my astonished wits together and took up my camera, firing off a succession of what would have been close-up shots with a larger quarry, but were fairly wide-area images of this miniature killer and her helpless prey.
She was swiftly and purposefully taking the spider to a hole she had dug - or was about to dig. In it she would deposit the spider: still grimly alive, but immobile, a safe supply of fresh meat for the single egg she would lay in its body. Then she would seal up the hole, and leave, never to return - only to repeat the whole process on another little patch of heathland, another luckless spider which would find its hunting skills utterly outclassed by one of Nature's fiercest carnivores, less than an inch long.
Anoplius cf infuscatus running backwards, dragging a
spider - True Composite Image
The Lodge, Sandy, Bedfordshire
Spider-Hunting Wasp, with prey - as close as I could get while she was running so swiftly
The sandy heathland is on the Lower Greensand
(Aptian Stage, 112-125 Million Years Ago, in the Lower Cretaceous).
© Ian Alexander 2010