Black Digger Wasp
Size about 50mm. I read that it should be more like 25mm. Maybe, I am wrong. The hind legs are huge and maybe I counted it towards its size. Frankly, around large wasps I am a bit nervous. It looked absolutely huge to me. It scanned tree after tree in our garden, stayed long enough on our coffee bush for me to take a few pictures. The coffee beans in the picture are not full size yet but may give an idea of its size. We have a lot of grasshoppers and katydids but also large spiders that it might have been targeting. I doubt that it was there for some nectar. The upper part of its thorax looks golden and hairy. Abdomen is shiny black, not quite as long as the thorax. My identification is tentative (as most of the time). Taxonomically, ALA and GBIF don't agree on family level on where Sphex belongs. I follow GBIF here.
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