Getting Around (cont)

My latest trip was to Saltholme RSPB with Jen and Joe on Sunday.

There was no shortage of sightings.  I had certainly hoped to see an avocet but in the end we must have seen going on 20!  We also caught up with a rarity in the form of Temmincks Stint (two birds).  Overall there were too many photos to display individually so I've run them together in a video:

This actually excludes some of the more common birds such as sand martin, shoveler, pochard, tufted duck mallard and a pair of canada geese who escorted their (already plump) brood to hoover up leftover bird seed underneath the feeders outside the cafe. 

The bright coloration of the two linnets we saw was particularly striking, but spare a thought for the poor reed bunting.

When we stopped to watch it, it started to come nearer and nearer, calling all the while.  At first we thought it might be begging for scraps but it was actually in distress as Joe found out when he spotted a stoat nearby escaping with a chick in its mouth.

I wasn't too sure about the identification of the sedge warbler, as the head shape and eye stripe in my photo didn't look right but other photos of the same bird were conclusive.

We didn't manage to see spoonbill or marsh harrier (apart from one suspect) but both are present.

It might be added that, on a finer day, we would have seen butterflies and bees in the plentiful wild vegetation but a see fret and resulting 12C temperature and north wind (!) meant we were restricted to just one very small buff-tailed bumblebee.

Meanwhile the garden has been fairly quiet.  I did at last manage to capture a male orange tip on film.

Orange Tip

Typically, I also managed to identify a couple of mystery bees about a week back.  After consulting inaturalist for not very impressive feedback, I'm plumping for Willughby's leafcutter bee and Marsham's nomad bee but without a great deal of conviction.  Who really knows about these nomad bees?..

Willughby's Leafcutter Bee?

Marsham's Nomad Bee?

Getting Around

I got out on a couple more trips this week.

On Monday the U3A Nature Watchers made it to the Low Barns Reserve next to the River Wear, which looks quite promising and certainly produced several pleasant if not unexpected sightings.

Straight away we caught my first sighting this year of a swallow in the typical 'bird on a wire' pose.

Swallow

Of course there were a couple of pairs of Canada Geese, one of which had some charming chicks, the other distinctly amusing in their mating activities.

Canada Geese mating

...and having mated...

Also we found the more obvious members of the grebe family:

Great-crested Grebe

Little Grebe

I was also quite amused to spot what I take to be a pair of immature greylag geese.  I think they look rather stately.

Greylag geese

Then at one point, something out of the ordinary happened when a bird appeared briefly on the fence and bushes in front of the hide - and appeared to be sporting a definite red breast,  Unfortunately, I had turned away briefly to check the feeders and couldn't get a photo of it.  But I did see it later in flight, which was noticeably rapid and again got a clear flash of red breast. The only conclusion I could come to was that it might have been a red-breasted flycatcher, a relatively rare passage bird.

Unfortunately the only photo that someone did manage to take was inconclusive and looked more like a reed warbler and no further reports have followed.

As it happened I had to content myself with a shot of the first speckled wood butterfly I have seen settle this year.

Speckled Wood

In fact there's been remarkably few of them around this year.  Perhaps something to do with the cool, damp spring?

Dazed and Confused

Eventually the weather had to perk up, resulting in an increase in activity both in the garden and elsewhere.

One of the first signs of this about ten days ago was finding a large number of nomad bees swarming around my forget-me-nots.  I've never seen so many together and hardly any were actually settling, so a bit of a scunner.

I was fairly comfortable identifying Gooden's nomad bee and in subsequent days reckoned I'd identified male and female Panzer's nomad bees, one of which also turned up (I think) at Bolam Lake on Friday.

Gooden's Nomad Bee

Panzer's Nomad bee

The presumed female I caught in a bug box at home had entirely red and black bands on the underside, which tallied with a photo on the internet.

Then much more recently, this item turned up and also fell victim to brief imprisonment the bug box.

Nomad Bee

For reasons that are hard to define too closely, I'm not convinced that this is a panzer's.  Perhaps it's a bit too large, particularly in the thorax area.  So I started to wonder about flavous nomad as the nearest alternative but a bit of research show's that Marsham's and Kirkby's nomad bees are possible locally.  So I'm now unsure about nomad bees with any red markings...

Also, as there are so many nomad bees, where are the mining bees they predate?

Also confusing has been the continuing lack of butterflies settling in the garden. The couple that have were both green-veined whites but I had to take a bike trip along the Tyne before I could get a snap of an orange tip - a rather bedraggled female.

Green-veined White

Orange Tip

Now orange tips are everywhere including five in the garden yesterday, but still not settling or only briefly.

One clear certainty is that the red mason bee is back in big numbers and the wee bug hotel (more like a bug B&B really) is doing a roaring trade.

Red Mason Bees

I was also fairly confident of identifying a Hawthorn Mining |Bee at Bolam Lake...

Hawthorn Mining Bee

... unless it's Gwynne's Mining Bee, or something completely different?

For a few days now, I've puzzled over this small bee that landed on a californian poppy:

Chocolate Mining Bee

After careful consideration, I think chocolate mining bee.  I saw one last year I believe.

And again on bees, I definitely saw a garden bumblebee the other day.

Garden Bumblebee

Okay the tail looks a bit weird but I got a really good look at the double stripe around the waist.  You can just about make it out.

Lastly on a quick tour of a few lakes in Northumberland, it really looked like our small group was not going to see anything beyond standards like tufted duck, canada goose, common tern and great crested grebe.

Great Crested Grebe

Common Tern

Then, just as I was turning to go back to the car, someone someone spotted on osprey flying close overhead with a large fish between its claws.

Dazed and confused indeed!

Butterflies by Bike

I did think while writing my last post a couple of days ago that things could only get better and it proved to be the case.

Anticipating a fearsome 18C forecast I decided to make my weekly trip to Washington Sports Centre by bike on Tuesday, hoping that Cycle Track 7 would yield a few promising spots in spite of some gusty blasts of wind. 

It was only in the Pelton area that I came across a junction with a footpath that was surrounded by dandelions and immediately stopped to have a nose around.  Almost immediately I was elated to catch sight of my first orange tip of the year. During the whole trip I counted eight of them, all males and none of them settling as presumably on the hunt for females. Some of them were extremely small, suggesting under-nourishment. Also spotted later were a single red admiral and a single small tortoiseshell warming themselves on the path.

Anyway it was more the thought of bees that caused me to stop at Pelton and I soon found about five hawthorn mining bees nectaring on the dandelions.  The i-record website where I posted photos of them doesn't believe that an amateur like me can reliably identify a hawthorn mining bee.  Having however  seen them on a guided walk by the River Wansbeck, I'm confident I was right... and anyway there were at least three hawthorns nearby!

On the other side of the footpath, I caught sight of a massive bumblebee on the dandelions.  Dim memories of past years recurred and I reckoned it might be a cuckoo. Research in my trusty bee book suggested that it was indeed a gypsy cuckoo bumblebee though it would have to be admitted that the vestal cuckoo bumblebee is extremely similar.

Hawthorn Mining Bee

Gypsy Cuckoo Bumblebee

As you can see the size difference is fairly apparent. I actually saw some smaller bumblebees with similar markings to the cuckoo but dismissed them as buff-tailed bumblebees without an abdominal yellow stripe, which can sometimes happen.

After wrongly thinking I'd seen a rare ladybird, the next stop was by a bridge nearing Washington, where a good head of campions appeared.  However it was again the dandelions that produced something notable in the form. I think, though again disputed by the i-record website, they were a group of mini miners.

Mini Mini Miners?

Now the only mini miner that is mentioned by the trusty bee book as occurring in this area of the North East is the impunctate mini miner, so it could well be that these are they. However you can see that they are so small that they are almost totally buried by the wee dandelion petals and it is only the occasional antenna sticking up that suggests they might be bees at all.  But wasps also have antennae...

Perhaps inspired by all this I spent a fair bit of time in the garden yesterday.

Buffish mining bee turned up again as did tree bumblebee.  I may also have seen a single red mason bee but the photo I got is too blurry to tell. Slightly more exciting was rescuing a green shield bug from a bucket of water and even more exciting than that was seeing my first nomad bee of the year.

Green Shield Bug

Gooden's Nomad Bee

Again in conflict with i-record, I am confident about identifying Gooden's nomad bee, as several photographs showed no sign of red on the abdomen that would have suggested other locally occurring nomads - and it predates on the buffish mining bee.

Still no sign of butterflies here though.