Tales of the Unexpected

In anticipation of a decent plum harvest this autumn, I decided to remove the peanut feeders from the plum tree and hang them temporarily on the washing line to prevent the birds from nibbling at the ripening plums.

They took a bit of getting used to the feeders zipwiring along the washing line and I thought it would be amusing to take a photo of the new set-up in action.

By total chance what I actually got was a shot of a marsh tit sharing one feeder with a blue tit.

Marsh Tit(l) and Blue Tit

That was really quite a chance as visits from a marsh tit are particularly seldom and I didn't see one at all last year.

The loser in this adjustment was the cheeky nut-stealing squirrel who spent a couple of days trying to work out how get onto the feeder and eventually giving up after crashing through the buddleia bush a couple of times.

Last Friday I led a Naturewatch walk around Wingate Quarry Nature Reserve, which I'm pleased to say impressed those present with its variety of butterflies (once the sun got out) and abundant flora.  There weren't as many marbled white about as I had expected but there were good numbers of large and small white, common blue and small heath.  In terms of flowers, knapweed, pussy willow and ragwort but I left it to our resident experts to identify numerous rarities including fragrant orchid.

Common Blue (f)	Common Blue (m)
Marbled White	Small Heath
Small Skipper	Painted Lady

The painted lady was a bit of a bonus, the first one most of us thought we had seen this summer.

Even before the sun came out, bumblebees were plentiful, in particular red-tailed bumblebees of both genders.  I hadn't noticed the males so far this year.  Some bees had been considerably blanched by the sun during the recent hot weather.

I spotted one particularly corpulent bee which I believe was a gypsy or vestal cuckoo bee, remembering that they are hard to separate in the field.

Gypsy or Vestal Cuckoo Bee