Bumble Bees buzzing butterflies less so...

As the warm weather has slowly tailed off somewhat I have over the past eight days seen all the common species of bumblebee.

This was unsurprising as I started last Sunday with a bumblebee walk with K at Northumberland Park in North Shields.  Here we quickly accounted for buff-tailed bumblebee, early bumblebee, red-tailed bumblebee and common carder, but only one red admiral although there were various whites on flying duties

Early Bumblebee

Red Admiral

There was actually quite an impressive number of early bumblebees, the first I have seen this year.

Also noted were a male red-tailed bumblebee and a single beefly that I cam across while foraging.

We did a short bike ride to Ponteland on Tuesday which took in one or two sightings as we passed by - a single stoat, a tree bumblebee, various further flying whites and, pleasingly a single small tortoiseshell.  Good to know they are still around.

However all the bumblebee sightings were to be replicated more locally  over the past couple of days, mainly in my own garden - but with the eventual addition of garden bumblebee.

I've been struck this year by the big difference in size between male and female carder bees, the females seeming particularly large.

Female Carder Bee

There were some photographic difficulties with tree bumblebee and garden bumblebee though, in the former case because they weren't settling for more than a few seconds and in the latter because they spent most of their time buried in an aquilegia flower.  Eventually I got one in flight and captured the other in the bugbox.

Tree Bumblebee

Garden Bumblebee

I had to go a bit further afield to find another red-tailed bumblebee but found one not far from the Metro Centre of all places.  It was a female an here you can see the difference compared to the males seen at North Shields.

Red-tailed Bumblebee (m)

Red-tailed Bumblebee (f)

Butterflies have not been spotted recently, but I did find this tiny moth on my back patio door yesterday.

Unable to find an obvious match i went down the referral root and the best bet seems to be that it is a faded version of the yellow barred brindle.

Yellow-barred brindle

Events and Non-Events

Cycling along the Tyne for events in Newcastle, I've repeatedly noted a number of shelduck combing the mudflats in the area of Dunston Staithes, on either side of the water.

Shelduck

There was another pair further out.

I think I can safely say that the early broods of speckled wood are doing better than last year as they have appeared regularly when I've been out, not least in my garden.  Even more regular is still the orange tip including females.

Not for the first time I've noticed that the males this year are often small.

Speckled Wood

Orange Tip (female)

I've now had green-veined white and small white in the garden too.  Seeing the speckled wood often reminds how common they were in my first year here, in complete contrast to Dumfries and Galloway.

Last Friday, I reckoned red mason bees were starting to appear, got one photo and, sure enough, there was activity around the bug hotel to prove the point:

Red Mason Bee

More mysterious was the appearance of this hairy specimen with a white face.  Trapping it in the bug box didn't give me any better idea.  However the male red mason bee has a white face, which would suggest I haven't seen one before.

Red Mason Bee (m)

The obvious rival would be the European Orchard Bee, which has so far only been sighted in the South of England.

Otherwise the main visitor has been a rather fat carder bee, so perhaps a queen though very intent on nectaring.

Last Sunday I set out full of confidence to Weetslade Country Park to visit an area where I had seen several butterflies last year and saw - precisely nothing.  The flowers in the target area were simply not out and although there was bird's food trefoil on the hills, it was sparse and not yet in full bloom.

So it was less confidence that I set off to revisit Path Head Nature Reserve, nominally targeting the dingy skipper but in retrospect, I think I achieved my goal.

At first it looked like another no show and I was already half way round before I saw any invertebrate at all.  Then I saw a tiny green thing with wings and antennae and so I thought maybe mini mining bees.

Mini Mining Bee and tiny green things

I wasn't sure and wondered if those on the left were wee wasps.  However a comment on facebook suggests they belong to the Oedemera species - basically flower beetles.  We live and learn!  The larger one on the right might be a common mini-miner but frankly identification of mini-miners is so dubious it's hardly worth the likes of me bothering.

Further round the track it livened up a bit as there were twenty plus sand martins flying around the wetland and visiting the wall constructed for them. They were whizzing around so fast that the camera couldn't cope, but I got a couple silhouetted against the wall at distance.

Sand Martins

A bit further along a white butterfly appeared and inconveniently settled partly obscured in a deep hollow, requiring another photographic chef d'oeuvre to identify it as a green-veined white.

Green-veined White

Then, chasing around unsuccessfully to catch up with the first two red-tailed bumblebees I've seen this month, I disturbed something sandy grey that flew across the path before becoming invisible..  Initially I dismissed it as probably a day-flying moth.  But when I later advanced on a clump of bird's foot trefoil to investigate a ladybird, something else grey flew up from behind the clump and I twigged that I might indeed have hit on two dingy skippers.

Tracking them in flight against the reclaimed brownfield site was however impossible.

And now a homely touch...  Last time I shopped for bird food I mistakenly bought sunflower seeds instead of suet pellets.  But on using them in a feeder I noticed that I was getting visits from a couple of furtive bullfinches.

Furtive Bullfinch

I'm now wondering whether I've seen them on feeders before. Probably not.

Oh and last of all, I found this fly in the dining room the other day, again in the never-seen-one-like-that-before category.  More consultation suggests that it is a footballer hoverfly and as far as I can see from what research I've done, that appears to be correct.

Footballer Hoverfly

What a great name! As I said, we live and learn.

Bees And Not-to-bes (cont.)

One or two more mysteries emerged when I decided to take an early trip to Dipton Woods, Corbridge to see if green hairstreaks were appearing in view of the bright weather.

Not like me to get overly interested in flowers but I lingered a bit over the wood sorrels near the start of the track and, even less likely, wanted to know what the fungus was I saw on a tree in the same area.

Wood Sorrel

Hoof Fungus

So apparently it was a hoof fungus, appropriately named.

Green hairstreaks were about though not in the large numbers I have sometimes seen there.  In total I saw eight.  I thought it might be because it was early in the year but a chap I bumped into a bloke reckoned the couple he saw had been on the wing a long time.  The ones I saw turned out to be a mixture.

Worn Green Hairstreak

Fresh Green Hairstreak

Incidentally, aforementioned bloke also told me he had seen a tree pipit.  I didn't.

It was also encouraging to see a further eight speckled wood, showing they are in my view doing better than last year.

Speckled Wood

Also spotted but very hard to photograph were what I took to be a number of bilberry mining bees.  I was fairly convinced of this but they were always hanging of the bottom of bilberry flowers and the state of my knees doesn't encourage crawling around in the dust to get the right camera angle.

However there was also the appearance (twice) of another mystery tricolour nomad bee that I did manage to capture, the underside being particularly interesting for the contrasting brownish colour.

Nomad

Nomad (underside)

Experts may tell us that these tricolour nomads are impossible to distinguish visually, but given the likely presence of bilberry mining bee, there must be a shouting chance that this is Panzer's nomad bee, which is thought to be its main predator.

Bees And Not-to-bes

A few further identification issues have cropped up as as improving weather has brought more species into play.

Honey Bee (dark version)

Noting the presence of nomad bees and bee flies quite frequently, I started to wonder when I would see a red mason bee or any of the host mining bees in the garden.

Last Friday I thought I might have managed it but appearance approved to be deceptive as, on closer look it proved to be the darker version of the western honey bee when I finally captured it a a bug box.

The giveaway here is the cylindrical shape of the abdomen, where as it would be more rounded on a mining or red mason bee.

Not so many complications occur with butterflies in the North, although the whites can be a bit confusing if you don't see them close up. It took me a few years to get the female orange tip right because it is so different from the male.

However I did initially misidentify the first green-veined white to turn up in the garden as it arrived so soon after I'd managed to photograph the first male orange tip and visited the same area of forget-me-nots.

Orange Tip

Green-veined White

In this case of course the ideal way of separating then is to get a look at the underwing as they are completely different.  But you forget these things sometimes.

I also spent a good deal of time taking photos of this rather large carder bee (possibly a queen) as I wasn't altogether sure that it wasn't a tree bumblebee and every time it settled, you couldn't get a clear view of the abdomen.  This was the eventual decisive shot:

Carder Bee

I got into even deeper water when I captured another nomad bee and realised it didn't look quite like the Gooden's nomad bee I was anticipating.

Mystery Nomad Bee

Well I was right.  Experts on facebook, having spotted a tinge of red at the top of the abdomen which totally eluded me, confirmed it's not Gooden's and there was one suggestion that it might be a species that I did have under suspicion on the basis of the stripe pattern - the broad-banded nomad bee.  

However the broad banded nomad bee is rare and there have been no confirmed sightings in the North of England. So it has to go down as a mystery - one of several tricoloured nomad bees that are very similar and also very variable in appearance.

Anyway two days later I did finally manage to catch up with at least the red mason bee, if in a somewhat unusual fashion.

I was taking a look at the bug hotel on the summer house when I noticed that there was something struggling ing in a bucket of water directly beneath.  I fished it out and discovered that it was in fact two bees trapped in flagrante delicto, which I transferred onto a stray forget-me-not in a plant pot.  

Identification wasn't easy as a drenched bee looks completely different from a dry one.  They stayed like that for a while until, suspecting it was dead, I touched the male and it flew off.  The female eventually disappeared too.  I was convinced they were red mason bees and, sure enough, ones and twos started to appear on the bug hotel.

Double Red Mason Bees

Single Red Mason Bee (l)

Many A Slip...

 In a period of unsettled weather, yesterday looked to be the best opportunity to look for some invertebrates, so I set out for a slow ride to take in Path Head Nature Reserve, Ryton Meadows and the Spetchells.  Unfortunately some photography issues limited the possibility of confirming some sightings.

Path Head is a reclaimed recycling site and looks promising for future months and years.  During a brief outburst of sunshine, I quickly spotted a peacock, a red-tailed bumblebee queen and a carder bee.  Quite a few dandelions were out and I was looking out for mining bees but the result was a number of mini miners, as usual hard and somewhat controversial to identify.  However I captured one in my bug box and am fairly confident it was a common mini-mining bee.

Another capture I made later showed a very small bee with a lot of red on the thorax and reddish legs.  The photo however was unhelpful. Following a tip that it might be a small nomad bee, I reckon a long shot might be little nomad bee, which preys on the common mini-miner though more prevalent in the South.

Little Nomad Bee?

Later there was an opportunity to see a heron admiring the flora.

Heron

In fairness there was a drainage trench nearby.

I then headed to Ryton Meadows, in the hope of perhaps seeing an early small copper.  It wasn't entirely unexpected when that hope proved forlorn (a bit early yet) but I did find another interesting bee on another dandelion.  It looked like a small nomad bee but notably had a yellow face.  I can't see any potential matches.  Maybe it was a wasp.

It was at this point that the technical problems really began to take over as a series of images I'm certain I took between arriving at Ryton and climbing up the Spetchells have simply disappeared from my little travelling camera.  As I actually had it round my neck while riding I can only assume that the delete button got pressed a few times accidentally, which seems most unlikely..

So as well as unable to get any further with the possible nomad I lost photos of a peacock and several of orange tips including females and some of suspected chocolate mining bees that I wanted to double check.

Approaching the Spetchells with the camera now back in my rucksack, I noticed a number of small nomad bees patrolling a wee area of grassland next the cycle track. They looked rather like Gooden's Mining Bee but a good deal smaller than the ones up on the chalk. Again having referred to experts for an identification, the suggestion is that it might be a male Gooden's though I must admit I'm surprised it was that much smaller. This time I got a reasonable pic.

Gooden's Nomad Bee (m)

There was about 10-20 of them flying around low and seldom settling for more than a few sedonds.

Before going up to the Spetchells I noticed another bee on a dandelion right next to where I parked my bike.  I was fairly confident it was an orange-tailed mining bee but in this case the photo was too poor to say.

The reason for heading to the Spetchells was to see if the buffish mining bees are in action yet.  Indeed they are - in their many thousands.  It looked to me that they were all males but activity was particularly intense in one small area, I suspect because of the presence of an early female (at the top of the frame in the video):

One Buffish Mining Bee

Many Buffish Mining Bees

As a bonus, I also managed to find the first  - excepting my trip to Spain - small tortoiseshell and the first speckled wood (what on earth's happening with them?)  I've seen this year, as well as a not so great photo of the last female orange tip of the day.

Small Tortoiseshell

Speckled Wood

Female Orange Tip

Rare birds in my garden?

My activities have been somewhat constrained over the past three weeks for various reasons.  Principally I took a tumble from the bike and jarred my shoulder badly but other matters have intruded - shopping for a new car, sorting a minor emergency with the front door, birthday celebration arrangements and getting more involved with the local Amnesty group. 

As a result any sightings during the fine weather were restricted to the garden.

I don't know if it made the difference but I changed the contents of one of the feeders so it contains a mixture of suet pellets and peanuts, but recently a couple of rare birds have turned up regularly over the past few days.

Here I am referring to the house sparrow and the common starling:

Sparrow

Starling

Now of course you immediately think that these birds are not rare at all but, as I have surely mentioned before, they rarely turn up in my garden, and now visit repeatedly.

One can only speculate why...

The starling looks on inspection to be a young bird and maybe doesn't know any better.  However they frequently appear on the rooftops, including mine, without actually visiting. Sparrows can be seen on a daily basis less than fifty yards from my front door but until now have been totally outnumbered by dunnocks. Perhaps both have been intimidated by the number of jackdaws that turn up and the latter turn up less often as I tend to chase them off.  Both species can appear in twos and threes as well as one-offs.

There were also some sightings of bees and butterflies but still quite restricted. 

One white that actually settled briefly was a petite male large white, which surprised me a bit as i associate them more with the back end of summer. 

The most common visitor continued to be the dark-edged beefly but there were still not so many bees - the odd buff-tailed bumblebee queen or worker and a tree bumblebee. The one new occurrence was a common carder bee.  The hairy legs and long whiskers indicate that it is a male.

Common Carder Bee

Elsewhere locally there have been sightings of mining bees, a red mason bee and one very early green hairstreak.

Now largely recovered, I need to get out more.

Isn't it good when things just work?

A little bit of movement in the garden after April Fool's Day was the result of rising temperatures as a dry spell went into its second week.  It was a nice contrast to the wet and cool Spring last year, which affected many pollinators adversely.

On the 1st itself a peacock butterfly turned up and settled on the wooden 'path' near the decking but was easily disturbed.  The following day I spotted a bumblebee queen I assumed would be of the buff-tailed variety but turned out to be a tree bumblebee queen, the other sort turning up very shortly afterwards,  Then a beefly turned up and obligingly settled on a leaf.

Buff-tailed Bumblebee Queen

Dark-edged Beefly

Tree Bumblebee Queen

Interesting to note is that tree queens and a worker have showed up on two further occasions, suggesting they may be making a garden comeback after I stopped them nesting in the wall of the downstairs bedroom a good few years back.. 

Also the beefly has been seen every time I've been in the garden, but there have been no sign of any mining bees which they predate on.

But the most successful session occurred on Sunday...

My son and I have often spoken about the need to see mandarin ducks.  As they have been showing up in the Gateshead area we decided to have a go here.

The plan was to start at the hide near Thornley Woodlands Centre, where there were recent repeated sightings, so V&A drove over and we arrived just in time to see a family and several dogs being loaded into a car and were able to claim one of the limited parking spaces when they finally pulled out.

The hide didn't prove to be the answer but we did see a few other birds, and satisfyingly, the first orange tips I've seen this year.

Nuthatch

Chaffinch

Okay, a chaffinch doesn't seem like a big deal but the fact is I very rarely see them in my garden.

After an hour or so we had a debate whether to head for Saltwell Park, where there had been one sighting or chance our arm a bit by taking a wander along the Derwent.  We decided on the latter.

I had forgotten how long and steep the Riverside Trail down from Thornley Woods actually is, but eventually we made it down to Nine Arches Bridge, and started heading West.

But we had hardly gone two hundred yards when a couple of ducks were sighted scooting away from us and a couple of rowdy dogs.  And sure enough my son, who is eagle-eyed when it comes to bird spotting, confirmed that we had achieved our objective - a male and a female mandarin duck.

However the ducks, having been spooked, decided to hide away in the bushes on the far bank before we could get any more than distant shots of them. It was then a case of stick or twist - whether to sit it out and wait for them to come out again or head further up river after a third duck we had noticed.

We sat it out and eventually the couple ventured back into the water, allowing us to get the photos we were after as they paddled up and down.

Mandarin Ducks

The couple kept returning to an area just downstream where some driftwood and rubbish had accumulated on tree branches and the third bird, another male, turned up again leading to some confrontations as he tried to move in on the first male's territory.

Even better more orange tips and peacocks turned up while we ere waiting for action, for me the first photo opportunities this year..

Orange Tip

Peacock

There was also a comma and I thought I saw a small tortoiseshell - an experience that was confirmed when we made a last stop at Far Pasture on the way back. I was interested to see the peacocks in particular settling on the ears of the reeds and we wondered why they did so.  Probably they were just warming themselves.

I also got shots of some of the typical long-term residents at this location - gadwall and teal.

Gadwall

Teal

All in all, a very satisfying expedition!