Birds and Nomad Bee

Last Wednesday I took the bike to St. Mary's at Whitley Bay where a few birds have been reported, notably whitethroat and sedge warbler.  Although I've seen both before I fancied reacquainting myself.

Whitethroat was no problem at all as one was singing away merrily from a tree as soon as I got to Old Hartley.

There were a lot of sedge warblers around and they could be heard virtually anywhere but unfortunately i could only get shots of more whitethroats and a couple of reed buntings.

Reed Bunting

I have just started using the merlin app to identify bird song and it claimed it had heard an american duck called the Common Loon.  You'd think that was an error however as the hardline twitchers would no doubt have tracked that one down.

L:ast time I mentioned not managing to capture a small nomad bee.  Well this week I managed to get one in a bug box and could identify it as a Flavous Nomad Bee.  Although it can be confused with Panzer's Nomad Bee - and this discussion came up last year - my inclination on the strength of photos was much in favour of the former.  Unfortunately the photographic evidence has been accidentally deleted.

My recently installed bug hotel is now doing a strong trade with red mason bee guests.

Unfortunately they still keep falling into buckets of water and the last one came out so black, I at first didn't think it was a red mason at all.  But as it tried back the colour slowly returned from the abdomen upwards until it finally flew away.

Very wet red mason bee

Today I had another brief sighting of a patchwork leafcutter bee sizing up a large leaf and recorded my first definite speckled wood butterfly of the year.  Normally I would have seen 20 + by now.

Busy with the Bees...

I would never predicted that the first butterfly I caught on camera this year would be a green hairstreak, but that's exactly what happened.  A week ago on Tuesday I made a bit of an energetic bike ride to Dipton Woods near Corbridge, thinking it might be too early in a wet May and too late in the day for much chance of success.

On arrival the sun was still pretty warm in my favoured hot spot and I was delighted to find that a suspected brown moth in fact turned green on landing. One sighting only compared to last year's bonanza but nevertheless...  An added bonus was that, after much stalking in the same area, I managed to capture my first ever bilberry mining bee.

Green Hairstreak

Bilberry Mining Bee

This for me summoned the final arrival of Spring. 

The addition of a small bug hotel on the summerhouse has marked a major increase in the number of red mason bees in my garden.  On sunny days there can be a dozen or more.  Unfortunately the bug hotel is located immediately above a bucket that has been used to catch dripping water from the summerhouse roof and a few have contrived to fall into it.

The one on the right obviously wanted to know how long it'd been in there...

Red Mason Bee

Wet Red Mason Bee

In spite of the lack of attractors this year, male and female orange tip both visited my garden a few days later and a peacock was spotted sunning itself on the shed roof.

Orange Tip

Female Orange Tip

A pair of orange tips gave a mating display shortly afterwards but it was bees that have continued to provide the highlights.

I've noticed a few garden bumblebees, possibly the same queen roaming around and finally managed to prove it, though it rarely stayed completely still for very long.

Garden Bumblebee

More surprisingly an early bumblebee was found in recovery mode on the summerhouse.  I've seen them before in the field but not in the garden.

Early Bumblebee

On Wednesday a red-tailed bumblebee queen was on the prowl, but never settled at all over a full fifteen minutes surveying for nesting sites.

Also on Wednesday, by a complete chance, I caught sight of a patchwork leafcutter bee that promptly managed to ensnare itself in a spider's web.

Patchwork Leafcutter Bee

If you expand the image, you can just about see the stomach hairs on this female, used for storing pollen.

Nomad bees are still visiting in fair numbers and I finally had a bit of success with identification.  It looks very much like this one is Marsham's Nomad Bee, though the whole area of nomad identification is a bit of a quagmire.

Marsham's Nomad Bee

This may not be the end of the nomad quest.  I'm sure there's a smaller one turning up that may be different but so far has proved too nippy to get into the bug box....

Still, it's amazing what you can see in even a relatively small garden when it comes to bees!

Slow Spring Start

It seems amazing that we are well into May and I haven't seen a single butterfly in the garden or managed to photograph one, which normally would have happened weeks ago.

Bees have been a little more obliging and one or two mining bees have started to appear on forget-me-nots.  Tree bumblebees have put in a few appearances and also seem to like the pink campions that have appeared from somewhere.

Buffish Mining Bee

Tree Bumblebee

On the last day of April I went to the Bakethin Reserve at the northern end of Kielder Water in search of mandarin ducks but didn't manage to see any.  In fact there wasn't much to see at all apart from some fairly standard issue ducks and a couple of shovelers fighting over a female.  Even the osprey landing area was deserted apart from a crow and clearly hadn't been built on.

Crow not osprey

I had a look at the South end of the reservoir and at various points on the River North Tyne, also without success.  Maybe the North Tyne at the northern end would have been a better bet.

On a bike trip a week ago, I came across quite a few chocolate mining bees on dandelions.  A more recent ride on Sunday in reasonably warm weather yielded a good few orange tips, a peacock and a red admiral, all in flight.

Chocolate Mining Bee

Back in the garden it was pleasing to see a woodpecker on the one peanut feeder I now have out - the first for many a long month.

Woodpecker

Also putting in an appearance has been a small number of nomad bees, as last year.  However, I'm not confident on precise identification from the photo and have sought further advice.

Nomad Bee

Laughably, just as I write this an unidentified white butterfly has just flown past...