418 
Psyche 
[December 
located. Brief observations of digging behavior indicated that the 
soil is pushed out a load at a time, the females emerging abdomen 
first, with a pellet of soil held ventrally between the curved tip of 
the abdomen and the hind legs. At the nest entrance the soil is 
thrust out, apparently by the hind legs, and simply accumulates as 
a rim about the entrance, with no leveling being done. Apparently 
most digging is done at night or in the very early morning, for 
when we checked the colony early on days following heavy rains, 
numerous freshly made mounds were always present. 
The Black Mountain colony exhibited a very decided preference 
for a single blowfly species, Calliphora tibialis Macquart (Table i). 
The constancy over the entire nesting season to this one species was 
remarkable, and indeed, the only nest from a different locality (Note 
A 193, Cotter Reserve, AC.T.) also contained exclusively C. tibialis . 
The only exceptions at the Black Mountain colony were a single 
individual of C. sternalis Malloch found in a nest excavated on 
7 January (early season) and 7 individuals of C. accepta Malloch, 
all taken on the same day (4 March) near the end of the nesting 
season, when C. tibialis populations may have been declining. 
By visiting the colony at different times of the day we were able 
to establish that most, if not all, provisioning occurred during the 
first hour after the morning sun first hit the tops of the trees. On 
26 February, a completely clear morning, much provisioning occurred 
between 6:20 and 6:50 a.m. On 28 February the sun was behind 
clouds until 6:55; no provisioning was noted between 6:00 and 6:55, 
but after that time, until 7:45, many flies were brought in. The 
temperature at 6:00 was 58° F; during the period of provisioning 
it was undoubtedly a few degrees higher than this, but no other 
Hymenoptera whatever were observed to be active at this time. 
Indeed, there was no considerable amount of Hymenoptera activity 
in this area until about 9:00. Yet Sericophorus viridis appears 
specially adapted for performing under these conditions of cool 
temperatures and long shadows. Only one instance of prey carriage 
Was recorded after 8 :0O, a situation in striking contrast to the 
behavior of the following species, S. relucens. Similar early morning 
hunting was also reported, however, for S. teliferopodus in Victoria, 
and according to Rayment (1955b) this species also preyed ex- 
clusively on blowflies, utilizing only the males. This led us to 
inquire as to the sex of our sample, and Dr. D. H. Colless reports 
that in fact all of the nearly 100 blowflies we recovered from nests 
.of S. viridis were males. 
This puzzling behavior is more understandable if one considers 
