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. 

A Turn up for the Bee Books

Well the mining bees are turning up thick and fast and testing the depths of my rusty knowledge.  Unfortunately a lot of them are coming up as unidentifiable or suggestions from the likes of iNaturalist or Google Lens are inconsistent or contaminated by American sources.

However one particular lead has struck gold as it appears I may have seen a bit of a rarity - the red-girdled mining bee.

Red-girdled Mining Bee

This has been confirmed as feasible by a local expert who now thinks it may have been under reported in the North East as previously thought only to occur on the Spetchells.  But it occurred to me that I had seen something very similar at the Calaminarian Grassland near Wylam three years ago, when I thought it was a blood bee.

Anyway it has been turning up in the garden regularly (sunshine permitting.)  Here's an attempted close-up in the bug box:-

Close-up

This came from a video that I accidentally stopped after four seconds... Doh!

Otherwise a degree of confusion reigns over visiting mining bees in terms of establishing what kind of mining bee is visiting, for example this one:

Mining Bee

Or this one:

Mining Bee

... whereas this one could be the first honey bee of the year or another mining bee.

What seems clear from the number I get plus nomads and beeflies is that there must be a promised land of mining bees nearby.  Old maps of the area where I live are interestingly marked "sewage works."

By contrast the plentiful red mason bees are easy to spot.  They are starting to show some tentative interest in the bug hotel and still great fans of the summer house.

Red Mason Bee

Unfortunately one silly red mason bee managed to fall into a bucket of water, after which I fortunately managed to rescue it and found a sunny spot so it could dry off before flying again.

After bath

Before flying

Nevertheless, I still managed to get confused by one item.

Unidentified

This has the shape of a red mason bee but appears a good deal darker.  I wondered if it was a male but not convinced.

Not a great photo anyway.

A Busy time of Year

Over the past ten days, the number of sightings has really exploded and it's hard to keep tabs on it all.

It started with a ride to Byker and back with sightings of a mistle thrush, cormorant and two pairs of shelduck.  More engaged with the insects, significant for me however was the first sighting I have had this year of a comma butterfly.

Comma

That was on 23rd April.

Over the succeeding days, sightings of bees accelerated still mainly led by red mason bee. I managed to get a video of one of the nomad bees which produced a better than usual image, suggesting it is either a flavous or early nomad bee. 

Flavous or early?

There has also been a couple of smaller bees turning up but proving elusive because of a prevailing wind.  I fancied one might be blue mason bee (which has turned up before) but various photos didn't show good angles and advice suggests that it is Gwynne's mining bee.  The only decent shot of the other one still wasn't great and iNaturalist's lead suggestion of hawthorn mining bee seems unconvincing.

Gwynne's Mining Bee

Unidentified Mining Bee

Around the same time there were no great problems identifying the first female orange tip to visit the garden.

Orange Tip (female)

Confusion however again reigned on a walk at MiltonRigg Wood in Cumbria last Sunday with V&A. It was quite an impressive venue with a good amount of bilberry.

I saw a few bumblebees with a red-tailed stripe and thought I might have found a red-tailed bumblebee queen at one point.  However the one very poor photo I got showed a white stripe on the thorax so I suppose could have been a bilberry bumblebee queen.  Similarly thee were a couple of fleeting visits from carder bees but so brief it was impossible to assess if either were a moss carder bee.

Meanwhile V's merlin app was reporting all sorts of birds, notably including pied flycatcher and redstart (very feasible) as well as ring ouzel (somewhat dubious).  The birds were high up in the well-established trees, and only A managed to see a couple.  All I saw was a pair of mallards on the wetland area...

More successful was double outing with AMG on Thursday.

First target was the green hairstreak at Dipton Woods Corbridge.  Last time I was there the hairstreaks had started to occur in a recently-felled area near the North Eastern end of the path and I had a suspicion things might have developed.

Sure enough, we found them in numbers there, often in groups of two or three.

Green Hairstreak

Overall I counted thirty and that was without re-foraging this new 'hotspot' on the way back to the car. We did also visit the area where they've been seen in previous years but this old 'hotspot' appeared somewhat overgrown and only accounted for two of the sightings. Incidentally someone managed to see as many as 74 somewhere in County Durham.

Other sightings were a peacock, and about six each of speckled wood and small white, in both cases the first definite sightings I have noted this Spring.

The next stop was The Spetchells at Prudhoe, where we fully expected to see vast numbers of buffish mining bees.  But first there was a pleasant surprise when a holly blue turned up next to the path along the Tyne.

Holly Blue

There's been a few sightings of holly blue this Spring (maybe a good year for them?) and one turned up in my garden this morning as I was preparing to write this entry. It flapped around in front of me as I headed for the summer house for about a minute.  Unfortunately, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a plate of biscuits in the other, I was powerless to react.

Anyway, the very dry Eastern end of the Spetchells was virtually devoid of buff-tailed mining bees.  Walking west we did manage to contact them but it was the case of a maybe a hundred rather than the thousands around at the end of last April.  Also in attendance were of course good numbers of Gooden's nomad bee, their main predator.

Buffish Mining Bee

Gooden's Nomad Bee

I must say I haven't been too impressed with my Nikkon camera in recent attempts to capture images of insects. It does fine with birds but is often out-performed by my wee Panasonic for close-ups of smaller items. I think I may need to check the settings to see what can be improved.

Approaching teatime we took a quick look for the sand martins but they haven't appeared yet.  What we did see on the way back was a couple of brown shapes that may have been dingy skippers but we couldn't be anything like certain.

So the next day I took a brief ride to Pathhead Nature Reserve and did find a couple of them messing around on the northern bank of the area.  Even with the Panasonic, it was difficult to keep up with them.  They were very small and active and closed their wings almost immediately on landing so they were heavily camouflaged in the brownfield mini-landscape.

Dingy Skipper

I decided to take a tour round the rest of the site, seeing nothing else but when I returned they were still there as before.

I sat down to eat a couple of snacks thinking that one of them would inevitably offer me a better shot - and never saw them again over the next twenty minutes. Odd!

Insects Are Back

After Madeira, there has been a burst of insect sightings in the garden in a number of short, mainly lunchtime sessions.  In fact so many that I can't exactly remember the sequence of what was seen when.

I do know the first thing I noted - and this is now almost three weeks ago - was at least six green lacewings trying to break through the windows of my summer house.  This is a good deal more than I have seen in previous years.

Green Lacewing

A pity the window could have done with a clean...

I can also remember that the day after I got back I helped out clearing a butterfly site at Greenleighton Moss of sitka spruce saplings.  An uneven bog isn't ideal for carting a camera around as well as cutting equipment but we the day was fine and we encountered lots of six spot ladybirds, several lizards, bog rosemary, wild cranberries and right at the end a single adder sunning itself on the trail.

The ladybird theme has continued in the garden and there are couple working on the garlic mustard, often in the company of a green shield bug.

Green Shield Bug

It was at last possible to get a shot of one of the buff-tailed bumblebee queens that have been around since mid-March and these I have now been joined by occasional tree bumblebees which I think are also queens as well as by a couple of queen wasps

Buff-tailed Bumblebee Queen

Tree Bumblebee Queen

Queen Wasp

I was wondering which would be the first non bumblebee to turn up and it was not totally unexpectedly a red mason bee, which have since made their presence felt in increasing numbers, although so far showing no interest in the bug hotel on the summer house wall, preferring the summer house itself.

Red Mason Bee

Meanwhile butterflies also eventually appeared, though it was on a brief ride past Swalwell Cricket Club that I saw my first orange tip.  Eventually a couple more males have turned up in the garden too, plus the first green-veined white.

Orange Tip

Green-veined White

I was for a while a bit surprised that there were no mining bees around especially as I did get a couple of visits from a dark-edged beefly which is one of the key predators.  But after a while I found a chocolate mining bee by accident and not long after a tiny nomad bee, also a predator.

Dark-edged Beefly

Chocolate Mining Bee

Nomad Bee

What kind of nomad bee it was is very hard to assess.  What I can say is I've never seen one so small. I actually mistook it for a wee chafer of some sort.

Also appearing recently was the first bee imitator, the well known common drone fly.

Common Drone Fly

I shouldn't also forget the birds.  Here are a couple of less regular visitors:

Goldfinch

Chaffinch

The chaffinch has now become more regular since the introduction of sunflower hearts into one feeder. here is is clearing up after the greedy siskins who are messy eaters and keep dropping bits of seed onto the lawn.

The goldfinch is considerably less frequent and I'm not sure I've caught one here on camera before.

Madeira Day 6 and Evaluation

"So what happened  to Madeira Day 5?" you might understandably ask.  The simple answer is I had a day off on the sun lounger and in the swimming pool!

Day 6 was my last day in Madeira but an evening flight left me time for another short walk.

My original intention was to walk the road to Quinte Grande for a snack but on getting there sooner than expected and not feeling hungry I changed plan. It wasn't far to get to Campanario, so I decided to revisit briefly the Levada do Norte and make my way back to Cabo Girao via the Vereda das Fumas instead of through the tunnel.

Although I only spent half an hour on the levada, it was pretty productive although the wagtails were no longer around.  

There were firstly a couple of hoverflies I wasn't sure about and still haven't identified.

Hoverfly

Hoverfly

There was a suggestion that the one on the left is a marmalade hoverfly but I'm not convinced - it's plainer in pattern, darker and has a different body shape to ones I have seen.

 Near the area where I saw the painted lady two days ago a small white flew over and settled on the other side of the levada.

Small White

What is interesting here is the paucity of markings. Presumably a male, the spot is very pale and there is a complete lack of making on the edge of the upper forewing.

Of course there was a profusion of speckled woods and this one is an example where the background colour of the upper wing is a bit paler than the one I saw in the Tropical Garden.

Speckled Wood

Also settling very briefly was a butterfly that was clearly a blue but on checking the hurried photograph, clearly not the common blue I first expected.

Long-tailed Blue

In fact it is a long-tailed blue, known locally as pea blue, but the poor focus makes it hard to see the underwing pattern and of course the tails are not in view.

Crossing the road onto the lower section of the levada, a red admiral was for a change obliging enough to pose for the camera.

Red Admiral

However the next stretch, which is partially shaded by a rocky skyline, was less productive until the very end of the Vereda das Fumas.  Here there was a brownfield area with plenty of flowers that was attracting the attention of several clouded yellow.  I thought one I saw might be a female and spent some time trying to chase it down.  In fact I think they were all males.

Clouded Yellow

I like the detail on the head anyway. Today I had the feeling that the butterflies were just starting to get really active after a week of good weather.

After an ice cream at the tourist trap, I took a last brief walk up to the capella but saw nothing there of interest and it was time to head for home.

_______________________________________

In terms of overall comments, Madeira has to be mainly about the flowers.  I was really struck on flying in from the sands of Fuertaventura how green the island is. Anyone who loves flowers will be delighted by the immense variety.

In that respect it is perhaps puzzling, given the vast number of species of flowers how few pollinators there are - only 18 species of butterfly and one diurnal moth and around 20 species of bee, less than the number of bumblebees alone in the UK.  

Presumably wasps, flies and hoverflies make up some of the numbers but I still find myself wondering how so many flowers get pollinated.  One plant I never saw was buddleia and I idly speculated that its introduction might lead to an explosion of butterfly numbers.

One explanation for the lack of species variety of course is that Madeira is an isolated island so some of the species that are there have been imported accidentally or otherwise.  However some butterflies clearly make it on the wing from Africa and the Canary islands. There are also a number of obvious inconsistencies.  Madeira has small tortoiseshell, red admiral and painted lady so why not peacock? How come the large white died out when it is so plentiful elsewhere? How does the relatively even temperature on the island affect the development of butterflies and bees that flourish in other places where there is much greater seasonal variation in temperature?

These are just the thoughts that ran through my mind rather than any attempt to find a scientific explanation. I'm certainly glad I went and enjoyed what I found.

Madeira Day 4

Today I decided to do a walk along the Levada do Norte in the hope of extending my butterfly sightings in the forests North of Cabo Girao.

The trail led me along a narrow path with a mini levada past and through several gardens with some stunning flowers.  It struck me that they were just as interesting as anything I'd seen at the Tropical Gardens yesterday, so here are some examples.  I'm no expert on flowers so no guarantees as to the accuracy of the attempted approximate identifications.

(Rough?) Poppy	Wood Sorrel?
Babiana (genus)	A Hullwort

All improvement suggestions welcome...

Having missed an early red admiral, I joined the Levada do Norte at the point where it goes through a tunnel under the motorway (torch essential!) and set forth slowly in a Northerly direction.  The recommended walk from the hotel was about six miles return but, anxious to reach woodland, I reckon I did about double that.

I certainly saw a greater number of butterflies than on the Butterfly Tour but apart from the inevitable speckled woods, none of them settled for more than a few seconds.  The eventual count was:-

Painted Lady - 1

Red Admiral - 2

Clouded Yellow - 4

Small White - 6

Speckled Wood - 200 (estimated)

Of these only the painted lady was the only one that graced the camera lens.  I must admit that I was pleased to see one so early in the year even if it wasn't a great shot.

Painted Lady

I decided on a change of tactics for this walk and started lining up the targets using the LCD screen rather than the viewfinder.  It then seemed easier to pick out the intended subjects, including the following insects:

Bent-lined Carpet Moth

Indian Milkweed Bug

Again I'm grateful for extra help from iNaturalist on these. There were also three or four larger moths I wasn't able to identify and didn't settle.

Also sighted on the way out near Campanario was a blackcap and on the way back and slightly further North a group of grey wagtails.  I had hoped they'd turn out to be yellow wagtails thinking they would be the local equivalent but apparently not the case.

Grey Wagtail

As for the forests further North towards the picnic area, they produced precisely nothing except more speckled wood.  However they were predominantly pine and palm trees.  You probably would have to go a good deal further to find more Lauressilva forest.