Big Wasp!

[liveinabin]

So I was walking in the park the other day. It was a cold but sunny day and I stopped by the side of a pond to watch the ducks. The area I was in is wooded and fairly over grown (for a town centre park).
So there I am and I hear a buzzing. I look down expecting to see a wasp or bee. But I see this HUGE wasp. Now I'm a country girl but I have never seen a wasp this big. It must have been two inches long at least, and fat with it.
I say it was a wasp because that was what it looked like, rather than a bee. It was just like a scaled up wasp.

So I guess what I'm saying is what the hell was it!?

 

[ginoide]

could it be something that was discussed here?

 

[Yithian]

Try this thread.

 

[Anonymous]

Woodwasp
http://www.uksafari.com/woodwasp.htm

Don't worry, they are harmless...
except the larvae eat trees.

 

[Anonymous]

It could have been a hornet. I saw one once, in Gloucestershire. They seem about twice the size of yer average wasp.

UK Safari: Hornet

 

[Yithian]

At th risk of sounding like a fisherman you really should've seen the size of the wasps i encountered in Athens - huge, which wold be fine but with an evil temprament dwarving their British cousins - pure evil - burn them all!

...err...after careful scientific analysis, taxonomy and preservation....or something...

 

[Bannik]

There are alot of large ones where I live. My favorite are cicada killers.

 

[Anonymous]

IIRC many insects increase in size according to temperature and availability of food.
It's been preddy damn hot this summer, so I've seen some mighty wasps and even mightier hornets and some bleddy massive dragonflies (10 inches long at least, I kid ye not!)

One way to tell if it was a hornet is the deep droning buzz they create when they fly.

 

[liveinabin]

Well it didn't look like any of the pictures I've seen.
It wasn't as thin as the wood wasps. It was fat, it looked exactly like a regular wasp (or jasper as we used to call them when I was a kid) just twice the size.

Good point though the dragonflys here have been huge this year. We had one 'hunting' over our back yard most of the summer and I got to see him catch flys. He was fairly big!

 

[Bullseye]

Hornet, big buggers, brown and yellow,I know where theres a nest of them the back of which is glass, relly interesting watching them, just glad they cant get to me!!!.