My original tour of the parks of Bordeaux ended with a brief visit to Jardin Botanique but I was tired by then and there was so much to see I decided to revisit it in detail.
By the Sunday of my stay, the temperature had sunk to a mere 29C and the morning proved cloudy. The result was that few butterflies were to be seen but this was more than compensated for by the appearance of various other invertebrates.
It was still quite early when I came upon my first ever pantaloon bee, so-called because of the workers' massive pollen sacs. At first sight it's hard to make out the pollen sacs against the yellow background of the flower.
 |
| Common Pantaloon Bee |
This species does occur in the UK but isn't present in the North. By chance I later saw another one near the hotel I was staying in at Belvedere.
Shortly afterwards I came across a form of narrow-winged damselfly. There were plenty of ponds and as a result more common carp, this one looking particularly spooky.
|
|
Narrow-winged damselfly is a genus rather than a species but closer identification may not be feasible. Also in the wee ponds were a large number of water snails that seemed to be drifting around pointlessly but presumably collecting algae or similar.
The Jardin Botanique is pretty massive and must have a massive gardener. These are his wellies:
 |
| Wellies |
Amongst the flowers again I found at least four bees on a single blue flower head. One in particular caught my attention:
 |
| Seven-spined Wool Carder Bee |
I knew enough to realise it was probably a wool carder bee but I owe the precise identification to a couple of experts on iNaturalist after I captured it in a bugbox. Wool carder bees are so named because they gather their nesting material from furry plants. They are seldom seen in the North East and this is not the most common European example as far as I can gather.
Lastly I couldn't resist this item and suspected straight away that it was actually a wasp.
 |
| Scoliid Wasp |
Again scoliid is not a precise species as there are several varieties of the scolia family. There is one UK example, the large hairy flower wasp, but this isn't it.
At this point I decided to turn my attention to more cultural affairs, namely the Wine and Music Festivals that were both taking place along the left bank of the Garonne before returning the hire bike.
There was a minor sequel in that the day after, before setting off to the train station on my way home, I took a quick walk around the Place des Fleurs by the hotel (not over many fleurs by the way) and found this furrow bee.
 |
| Furrow Bee |
This has yet to be identified. To me it looks similar to the great banded furrow bee that does occur in the UK but there are doubtless other possibilities.
Overall...
In spite of several frustrations, Bordeaux provided a great few days of nature watching including species that I expected to see and many that I didn't.
And the cycle tracks, once away from the City Centre were great too.
No comments:
Post a Comment