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.