Thank you for looking! That is a good picture on DL. The cast skins look to be of dermistid beetle larvae - the arch nemesis of insect collecters everywhere.
No idea what the story is. Maybe the occupant died. Maybe it emerged normally but the leavings were scavenged by the beetles (curses be upon them). The main object in there is a cocoon. It would have had a pupa inside.

I have never looked into mud dauber nests, but my notion is that there should be a distinct exit hole in the mud in nests where the adult wasp had vacated. I expect the nest can remain for years in a sheltered area. Occupied ones won't have an exit hole. But I have never looked at them. There can be also be drama since the wasps are parasitized by other insects and so the living occupant may not be related to the builder.

Thanks for the info., I'll look for the roost if it is nearby and often used, or if I see them in those numbers again. I also used to feed my crows canned cat food, Bill. Once, I took Edgar (Alan Crow) to high school and kept him in my locker. When I fed him at lunch time, I didn't have a spoon, so I fed him the cat food with my finger, then went directly to English class. Soon, the whole class was disturbed by the smell, so the teacher couldn't teach. I meekly confessed to having cat food on my finger. Of course, she needed an explanation, (go figure!), and soon she had me go fetch the crow and do a mini-lesson on raising a pet crow. Elevated my popularity after that...

Bill, one of the things about pinhole images and cameras is that the image is 'always in focus'. Changing the distance of the pinhole from the sensitive surface can and will effect the images sharpness. The ideal sharpness (making it look more in focus) has several factors, mostly the size of the pinhole and the perfection of the hole that makes the pinhole.

One of the biggest factors in all of the practical side of this is to not have a spur left behind as you make the pinhole. Most makers of pinholes use extremely thin shim brass, then they sand the rear of the hole with extremely fine emery paper. You can get all of this at a hobby shop (Michel's, Hobby Lobby).

In the world of practical making of a pinhole to put on a digital camera here is what we did with students at the Southwest School of Art. You can get a body cap for your camera and using a iron for marking leather (plugs into 110 wall outlet) and burn out most of the plastic cover flat area where the name is. If not an iron, you can drill out the majority of the front. Don't be shy, remove as much as you can.

You can cut a toilet paper roll at different heights, but first spray paint the tube with cheap matt black paint, barring that, darken the paper with black ink. Using wood glue, glue to one end a flat blackened card board blank that you have punched a hole in close to the center. You can use a 1/4 inch hole punch, shape and size does not really matter.

Tape a tube length to the camera body cap that has your flat front glued to it, tis is your pinhole lens mount. Make different heights of these from only 1/4 inch deep to 1 inch deep. Better to make several to try out to see which one you like the results from.

Get out the roll of aluminum foil and using one layer you will make a single hole in the aluminum foil. This you will tape (any tape will do) the pinhole over the hole in the cardboard flat of your lens holder.

Making the pinhole, here is where the 'art' of craftsmanship happens. Get a soft quantity of news paper, DO NOT FOLD it, just cut a dozen to dozen layers and tape these down to a discarded soft cloth, this is the 'bed' to hold the aluminum when you prick the aluminum foil shard.

Cut several pieces of over sized pieces of aluminum foil (the size is so you can handle it easily during the making). Select a NEW number 10 (ten) SHARP needle. On the eye end put some tape to help you hold the needle. You only need the one needle and get a No. 10, it is the best for doing this work.

Hold the needle lightly! Hover over one slip of aluminum, try to stay as close to upright as you can with no fidgeting or shakes (for goodness sake, it's a slip of a piece of aluminum, make a bunch of them!)

Now bring the needle down and prick the aluminum foil. Do this over and over on a new shard of aluminum foil, each will be a pinhole, the more force you use the bigger the hole you will be making. Notice that with each pricking that you will be making different size holes, that is the idea! Make different size holes. I recommend that you give each a number written on the aluminum edge with a fine permanent parker pen.

Now you take this out side in the full sunny view and make some exposures with the camera. Stick to one ISO, say begin with 100 or 1000. KISS!, Keep It Simple Stupid! Then vary your times. Forget the pen and paper. Just look at what happens. You will find something like 4 seconds with number 16 looks good. Set it aside and look at the holes that look about the same size. Now try each of them for four seconds. Do get to detailed. Get it down to three or four of the bests and then start getting into best results/fine tune.

Additional note, tap the trimmed down pinhole with but one piece of tape during the tests. Leave the tap on the pinholes. I recommend electrical tape. When you find the great pinholes you can put tape all around the aluminum but don't get it too close to your pinhole. One layer on the front of the aluminum, later you can put tape on the layer of tape to affix the pinhole to the tube to mount that tube to the body mount. The body mount is singular, the tubes will have one attached pinhole and you change the pinhole held cardboard tube to the body mount.

Finaly, each tube gets a name, snow ball, raffles, sharp!, and so on and each goes into a zip lock bag with air in it so the pinhole lens is protected from crushing and dust. AGAIN KISS, in on the pinhole mount put a note ISO 100 4 seconds, winter). Into a larger zip lock bag goes the body cap, (in its own zip lock bag), and all your new lenses.

Final technical note, it is winter, it will take the longest exposure at sea level, in summer you will get an increase of 3/4 of a stop or ISO increase. At 5,000 foot above sea level you get another 3/4 ISO or f stop increase. If in a big city, you will loose 1/3 stop to pollution!

Have fun!

I usually see only 7-10 crows at a time, but this morning, as I watched the birds come to our feeders, I noticed hundreds of crows flying low over the trees for 45 minutes, from east to west, spread out for at least 10 miles from first to last. It was the coldest morning of the year, (about 3 degrees F), a slight wind and particle snow from the west. Where did they come from? Where were they going? We live 10 miles west of Rochester, NY, near some woods. Anyone else ever notice a phenomenon like this in the dead of winter?