Mainly About Bees

The first honeybees have started to show in the garden but so far no butterflies.  This is partly down to bad weather but partly because I chopped back the garlic mustard extensively last year expecting it to grow back quickly.  It hasn't and so little reason for any orange tips or green-veined whites to visit.  In fact I have only seen two orange tips so far this Spring - one from the bus at Winlaton Mill and one yesterday on the path up to the wood from Blackhall Mill.  

Honey Bee

I forgot to mention last time that I have seen a treecreeper climbing the birches at the back - about three times now - and there was a jay briefly in the trees. A greenfinch and a regular chiffchaff have been heard but not seen.

Last week I took a trip up to Edinburgh, where the weather was a good bit more favourable if a bit breezy.

I made straight for the Royal Botanic Gardens as it was known that a good number of flowers would already be in bloom.  In fact I was quite surprised to see that most of the rhododendrons were already in full bloom. 

Apart from buff-tailed bumblebee queens, there were a few carder bees around possibly including the paler form and a red-tailed bumblebee queen.  In the woodland garden, there were a few flying around a form of broom that seemed to have very white tails.

Doubling back North of the cafe, there were about 20 male hairy-footed flower bees nectaring on a plant called Munstead Blue.  Then I noticed that there was one that appeared to have an azure blue spot on its thorax.  After some effort I managed to capture it and it proved to be a small blue sticker bearing the number 12.

Hairy-footed Flower Bee

Same with sticker

How that can have happened is anybody's guess.  Maybe it had just come off the subs' bench?  Anyway it was still flying around quite happily when I visited the spot again two days later.

A visit to Malleny Garden at Balerno the next day looked less promising as there was very little that was already in bloom.  However the first tree bumblebee I have seen this year was rooting around in some undergrowth and was shortly followed by a flypast by my first comma butterfly this year.  Even better, I managed to capture this item, which proved as I had guessed to be a garden bumblebee.

Garden Bumblebee

So not at all a bad result - even though the noted doocoot was totally deserted - before I returned early to sample the entertainments of the City Centre.  Incidentally the comma was the only butterfly apart from an unidentified white I saw on the whole trip - a testament to the unfriendly weather up to now.

Here on a brief ice cream stop, I caught up with another red-tailed bumblebee nectaring on the dandelions near Princes Street.

Red-tailed Bumblebee

It looks like a male.

On my last day in Edinburgh I went back to the Royal Botanic Gardens and got into some more interesting parts of the Woodland Garden.

Here I spotted a goodish number of small bees working a flower border.  They were quite nippy and tricky to catch.  On investigation, I was surprised to find one of the bees trapped has a clear blue luminescence, which would seem to point to blue mason bee.  This is a species I've never seen before but does occur in the Edinburgh area, so I'm seeking expert confirmation.

Blue Mason Bees?

Male Blue Mason Bee?

I revisited the spot where I thought I might have seen white-tailed bumblebees two days before and managed to trap a suspect.

White-tailed Bumblebee?

Well it certainly has a white tail but I'm not entirely convinced by this not great photo.  It was bigger than the others I saw and the stripes aren't unambiguously 'lemony'.  My field guide says sometimes best to record them as bombus locurum agg, i.e. not too sure.

Lastly, I was quite amused on my way back to the guest house by the antics of this crow by the Water of Leith. It has obviously learned to pan for insects in the shallows as well as to ignore the anguished cries of owners of disobedient dogs.

Low Force and High Force Wind

On Saturday I joined up with Jennifer and Joe who are walking the Pennine Way in stages.

We met at Middleton-in-Teesdale to do the section to High Force.  Unfortunately I 'hit the wall' at about four miles and only made it to Low Force, the easy access to High Force from the nearby hotel having closed about 15 minutes before I got there. 

High Force

We saw surprisingly little wildlife during the couple of hours or so.  We thought there was a flock of fieldfares in some trees and there were three butterflies, one of which was a red admiral and a few buff-tailed bumblebee queens.  Birdwise there was the odd lapwing and curlew plus a few pied wagtails.

One surprise though was three completely white mallards that paddled their way across the Tees below Low Force.  Apparently this almost certainly means they were escapees as mallards held domestically are often bred to lose their natural colours.

We actually saw more birds while driving around the moors from place to place: partridge, a possible cuckoo, red grouse and short-eared owl.  And many skylarks.

A buff tailed bumblebee queen finally landed in my garden the other day.  So far they hadn't settled.

Queen Buff-tailed Bumblebee

Due to poor weather I hadn't been out on the bike for a long time apart from a couple of short refresher rides.  Again not much was seen but having got stopped at the level crossing at Wylam, I took a snap of the grey heron that frequently resides there.

Heron

Anyway, on Sunday I took advantage of what had been an excellent weather forecast for a ride up the coast to Cresswell and Druridge - except that the non-stop sunshine expected never happened and I was buffeted all day by a heavy onshore breeze that made me wish I'd taken my winter gloves!

On the Blyth estuary I got a couple of nice views of shelduck and redshank on the mudflats.

Shelduck

Redshank

I've always liked shelduck.

I did a detour around the Newbiggin area in search of Sandy Bay where rarities sometimes turn up - notably a bluethroat recently- but couldn't find it and made a quick exit to escape the Easter festivities.

At Cresswell and Druridge the most notable sighting was my first bar-tailed godwits, which turned up in both locations.  The one of Cresswell has spilled some weed on itself.

Bar-tailed godwit

I had hoped for avocets, which have recently appeared at both locations but unfortunately no luck and the spoonbill at Druridge didn't show either.  

Nevertheless there was a reasonable tally of further sightings recorded including a little egret in the corner at Cresswell, sanderling, lapwing, canada and greylag geese, shoveler, teal, wigeon, lapwing and several more shelduck

Lapwing

Shoveler

Unsurprisingly no butterflies were seen.