Revealed White-faced nest

Most of the leaves are now off the hardwood trees, and with the more-or-less end of the abscission season, a number of secrets are starting to be revealed, from the places those secretive warblers crafted to raise their young to the spots the White-faced Hornets constructed to build a—mostly—sisterhood of hymenopterans. This wasp nest, now revealed, was made of bee-gleaned paper glued together with White-faced spit, and though rugged enough to shelter the feisty insects from wind and rain, these abodes are not for the ages. Neither, of course, are the inhabitants, all of which, except for a fertilized queen or two—she'll seek winter-shelter under bark or logs, not at the nest she and her offspring created—are now dead. They've done their work. Their time is up. Their nursery is falling apart, opened to the elements by weather and the lack of home-improvement specialists to continually repair damage.