Troubled By Flies...

 In spite of changeable weather, sporadic sightings have still continued.

A week ago on Sunday was the last day clear of rain, when on a bike ride I spotted the first red admiral I have seen since early March plus a few whites, although still to find a small white that will pose for the cameras.

Apart from that I found  my first garden bumblebee of the season - a queen - rooting around the ground last Friday. 

Garden Bumblebee Queen

You can just make out the yellow strip straggling abdomen and thorax though the the tail stripe is almost totally invisible.

Since then it has been very hitty-missy but I did manage a few sightings on Tuesday.

Heading into the summerhouse I discovered a small bumblebee battering itself on the glass. It never settled but was easy enough to capture in a bug box, where it perhaps understandably continued to struggle.  However I saw enough to identify it as a male early bumblebee.  The giveaway was a small orange tip at the tail.

Early Bumblebee

I think this is the first time I've seen a male.

When I left the summerhouse immediately afterwards to check something else I returned to find, comically enough, a buff-tailed bumblebee battering itself against the same pane of glass. This time the bug box served as a rescue mechanism.

Otherwise the supposedly rare red-girdled mining bee put in a lengthy visit (the fourth in total) and a large nomad bee posed perfectly of a leaf of garlic mustard. 

Another Nomad

As ever, it's hard to identify nomad bees precisely though I would say it seemed different to the one I mentioned in my last post.

Before that, I was starting to be pestered by flies.  Not because they were getting intrusive but because I couldn't identify them.  I did get as far as eventually realising the one on the left might not be a common dronefly but the second one had me completely confused.

Tapered Dronefly

member of Platycheirus family

No I'd never heard of the Platycheirus family either. I'm relying on expert testimony here.

Then something strange happened.  What appeared to be two small moths started circling each other aggressively like some butterflies do, except that when one landed it was clearly a fly with broad, darkly-patterned wings.  I got a photo of it but the features didn't show up well.  Also of little help is the brief video I got of one of them flying off:-

Unidentified Flying Objects

I've never seen anything like it before.

Shortly afterwards the skies closed in.  Maybe they'll re-appear one day. 

Hardly Any Butterflies or Bees?

I seem to remember I did a post in April a couple of years ago entitled "Loads of Bees."  Well the ongoing cold and damp spell has met that the exact reverse has been true and only now looks likely to improve.

There was a single small tortoiseshell on a group bike ride up the coast (cut short due to muddy conditions) but the only sighting in the garden has been a single red admiral fly past several weeks ago.  Elsewhere there was one unidentified white by the Tyne on Saturday and that's all.

Apart from the odd honey bee, bees have fared scarcely any better and this all in spite of forget-me-nots being in full flower and a reasonable recovery by the garlic mustard, which seems a pity.

Up until Friday last week all I had seen worth noting was a queen wasp which took up brief residence in the summer house and a couple of visits from bee imitators.

Queen Wasp

Beefly

Tapered Dronefly

I think I'm right about the tapered dronefly, also having had a common dronefly to compare it with.

Then of Friday, a little rare sunshine produced a bit of a turnaround.  As well as usual visitors in the shape of tree bumblebee, common carder bee and buff-tailed bumblebee, I was particularly pleased to see a tawny mining bee on garlic mustard a couple of times.  I did think I'd seen one in the front garden last year but it was too brief a sighting to be certain.

Tawny Mining Bee

I thought I'd seen a buffish mining bee on dandelion about a week ago but the mobile phone photo was too poor to be sure but one turned up in the garden on Friday.  It is of course the most common mining bee.

Also notable was a large early bumblebee.

Buffish Mining Bee

Early Bumblebee

It is interesting to think that in spite of the overall paucity of bee species, early bumblebee has turned up more often than usual.  I reckon I've seen four already.

The obvious missing party in all this however is the red mason bee, which was around in big numbers last year when I was confident several nested in my bug hotel.  Maybe it's not checkout time yet.