Bees And Not-to-bes (cont.)

One or two more mysteries emerged when I decided to take an early trip to Dipton Woods, Corbridge to see if green hairstreaks were appearing in view of the bright weather.

Not like me to get overly interested in flowers but I lingered a bit over the wood sorrels near the start of the track and, even less likely, wanted to know what the fungus was I saw on a tree in the same area.

Wood Sorrel

Hoof Fungus

So apparently it was a hoof fungus, appropriately named.

Green hairstreaks were about though not in the large numbers I have sometimes seen there.  In total I saw eight.  I thought it might be because it was early in the year but a chap I bumped into a bloke reckoned the couple he saw had been on the wing a long time.  The ones I saw turned out to be a mixture.

Worn Green Hairstreak

Fresh Green Hairstreak

Incidentally, aforementioned bloke also told me he had seen a tree pipit.  I didn't.

It was also encouraging to see a further eight speckled wood, showing they are in my view doing better than last year.

Speckled Wood

Also spotted but very hard to photograph were what I took to be a number of bilberry mining bees.  I was fairly convinced of this but they were always hanging of the bottom of bilberry flowers and the state of my knees doesn't encourage crawling around in the dust to get the right camera angle.

However there was also the appearance (twice) of another mystery tricolour nomad bee that I did manage to capture, the underside being particularly interesting for the contrasting brownish colour.

Nomad

Nomad (underside)

Experts may tell us that these tricolour nomads are impossible to distinguish visually, but given the likely presence of bilberry mining bee, there must be a shouting chance that this is Panzer's nomad bee, which is thought to be its main predator.

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!