A Busy time of Year

Over the past ten days, the number of sightings has really exploded and it's hard to keep tabs on it all.

It started with a ride to Byker and back with sightings of a mistle thrush, cormorant and two pairs of shelduck.  More engaged with the insects, significant for me however was the first sighting I have had this year of a comma butterfly.

Comma

That was on 23rd April.

Over the succeeding days, sightings of bees accelerated still mainly led by red mason bee. I managed to get a video of one of the nomad bees which produced a better than usual image, suggesting it is either a flavous or early nomad bee. 

Flavous or early?

There has also been a couple of smaller bees turning up but proving elusive because of a prevailing wind.  I fancied one might be blue mason bee (which has turned up before) but various photos didn't show good angles and advice suggests that it is Gwynne's mining bee.  The only decent shot of the other one still wasn't great and iNaturalist's lead suggestion of hawthorn mining bee seems unconvincing.

Gwynne's Mining Bee

Unidentified Mining Bee

Around the same time there were no great problems identifying the first female orange tip to visit the garden.

Orange Tip (female)

Confusion however again reigned on a walk at MiltonRigg Wood in Cumbria last Sunday with V&A. It was quite an impressive venue with a good amount of bilberry.

I saw a few bumblebees with a red-tailed stripe and thought I might have found a red-tailed bumblebee queen at one point.  However the one very poor photo I got showed a white stripe on the thorax so I suppose could have been a bilberry bumblebee queen.  Similarly thee were a couple of fleeting visits from carder bees but so brief it was impossible to assess if either were a moss carder bee.

Meanwhile V's merlin app was reporting all sorts of birds, notably including pied flycatcher and redstart (very feasible) as well as ring ouzel (somewhat dubious).  The birds were high up in the well-established trees, and only A managed to see a couple.  All I saw was a pair of mallards on the wetland area...

More successful was double outing with AMG on Thursday.

First target was the green hairstreak at Dipton Woods Corbridge.  Last time I was there the hairstreaks had started to occur in a recently-felled area near the North Eastern end of the path and I had a suspicion things might have developed.

Sure enough, we found them in numbers there, often in groups of two or three.

Green Hairstreak

Overall I counted thirty and that was without re-foraging this new 'hotspot' on the way back to the car. We did also visit the area where they've been seen in previous years but this old 'hotspot' appeared somewhat overgrown and only accounted for two of the sightings. Incidentally someone managed to see as many as 74 somewhere in County Durham.

Other sightings were a peacock, and about six each of speckled wood and small white, in both cases the first definite sightings I have noted this Spring.

The next stop was The Spetchells at Prudhoe, where we fully expected to see vast numbers of buffish mining bees.  But first there was a pleasant surprise when a holly blue turned up next to the path along the Tyne.

Holly Blue

There's been a few sightings of holly blue this Spring (maybe a good year for them?) and one turned up in my garden this morning as I was preparing to write this entry. It flapped around in front of me as I headed for the summer house for about a minute.  Unfortunately, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a plate of biscuits in the other, I was powerless to react.

Anyway, the very dry Eastern end of the Spetchells was virtually devoid of buff-tailed mining bees.  Walking west we did manage to contact them but it was the case of a maybe a hundred rather than the thousands around at the end of last April.  Also in attendance were of course good numbers of Gooden's nomad bee, their main predator.

Buffish Mining Bee

Gooden's Nomad Bee

I must say I haven't been too impressed with my Nikkon camera in recent attempts to capture images of insects. It does fine with birds but is often out-performed by my wee Panasonic for close-ups of smaller items. I think I may need to check the settings to see what can be improved.

Approaching teatime we took a quick look for the sand martins but they haven't appeared yet.  What we did see on the way back was a couple of brown shapes that may have been dingy skippers but we couldn't be anything like certain.

So the next day I took a brief ride to Pathhead Nature Reserve and did find a couple of them messing around on the northern bank of the area.  Even with the Panasonic, it was difficult to keep up with them.  They were very small and active and closed their wings almost immediately on landing so they were heavily camouflaged in the brownfield mini-landscape.

Dingy Skipper

I decided to take a tour round the rest of the site, seeing nothing else but when I returned they were still there as before.

I sat down to eat a couple of snacks thinking that one of them would inevitably offer me a better shot - and never saw them again over the next twenty minutes. Odd!

Many A Slip...

 In a period of unsettled weather, yesterday looked to be the best opportunity to look for some invertebrates, so I set out for a slow ride to take in Path Head Nature Reserve, Ryton Meadows and the Spetchells.  Unfortunately some photography issues limited the possibility of confirming some sightings.

Path Head is a reclaimed recycling site and looks promising for future months and years.  During a brief outburst of sunshine, I quickly spotted a peacock, a red-tailed bumblebee queen and a carder bee.  Quite a few dandelions were out and I was looking out for mining bees but the result was a number of mini miners, as usual hard and somewhat controversial to identify.  However I captured one in my bug box and am fairly confident it was a common mini-mining bee.

Another capture I made later showed a very small bee with a lot of red on the thorax and reddish legs.  The photo however was unhelpful. Following a tip that it might be a small nomad bee, I reckon a long shot might be little nomad bee, which preys on the common mini-miner though more prevalent in the South.

Little Nomad Bee?

Later there was an opportunity to see a heron admiring the flora.

Heron

In fairness there was a drainage trench nearby.

I then headed to Ryton Meadows, in the hope of perhaps seeing an early small copper.  It wasn't entirely unexpected when that hope proved forlorn (a bit early yet) but I did find another interesting bee on another dandelion.  It looked like a small nomad bee but notably had a yellow face.  I can't see any potential matches.  Maybe it was a wasp.

It was at this point that the technical problems really began to take over as a series of images I'm certain I took between arriving at Ryton and climbing up the Spetchells have simply disappeared from my little travelling camera.  As I actually had it round my neck while riding I can only assume that the delete button got pressed a few times accidentally, which seems most unlikely..

So as well as unable to get any further with the possible nomad I lost photos of a peacock and several of orange tips including females and some of suspected chocolate mining bees that I wanted to double check.

Approaching the Spetchells with the camera now back in my rucksack, I noticed a number of small nomad bees patrolling a wee area of grassland next the cycle track. They looked rather like Gooden's Mining Bee but a good deal smaller than the ones up on the chalk. Again having referred to experts for an identification, the suggestion is that it might be a male Gooden's though I must admit I'm surprised it was that much smaller. This time I got a reasonable pic.

Gooden's Nomad Bee (m)

There was about 10-20 of them flying around low and seldom settling for more than a few sedonds.

Before going up to the Spetchells I noticed another bee on a dandelion right next to where I parked my bike.  I was fairly confident it was an orange-tailed mining bee but in this case the photo was too poor to say.

The reason for heading to the Spetchells was to see if the buffish mining bees are in action yet.  Indeed they are - in their many thousands.  It looked to me that they were all males but activity was particularly intense in one small area, I suspect because of the presence of an early female (at the top of the frame in the video):

One Buffish Mining Bee

Many Buffish Mining Bees

As a bonus, I also managed to find the first  - excepting my trip to Spain - small tortoiseshell and the first speckled wood (what on earth's happening with them?)  I've seen this year, as well as a not so great photo of the last female orange tip of the day.

Small Tortoiseshell

Speckled Wood

Female Orange Tip

Bees but no Butterflies

Foraging in the garden and a visit to Wallington Hall Walled Garden have produced a fair selection of bees but not much in the way of butterflies.  The occasional orange tip and green-veined white has turned up but mainly on trips out.  The big question is what has happened to the speckled wood? I reckon my confirmed total for Spring was two when normally I would have expected to see scores.

In the garden tree bumblebees and carder bees have been fairly consistent while the red mason bee has been much less in evidence.  More common than in previous years have been garden bumblebee and early bumblebee, turning up fairly regularly.

Garden Bumblebee

Early Bumblebee

I've continued to tangle with the odd nomad bee, of which this is an example:

Nomad Bee

Nomad (underside)

I've seen these before so not uncommon. I'd hoped the all-red and black underside might be a clue, but it seems to get me no further.

Red-tailed bumblebees have started to turn up and at Wallington, I got a nice view of a red queen:

Red-tailed Bumblebee Queen

Also there were a few white-tailed bumblebees and one or two that had a break in the abdominal stripe, meaning they could have been broken-belted bumblebees.  White-tailed have also been spotted in the garden.

White-tailed Bumblebees

Wallington provided me with a first damselfly of the year - a common blue.

Common Blue Damselfly

More of a puzzle amongst the honeybees was this. Eventually I came to the conclusion it was a late-appearing buffish mining bee.

Buffish Mining Bee

On the way to and from Wallington I heard and saw several yellowhammer, and tried unsuccessfully to take a photo of one on the way back.  Notably I did not see a single bird of prey and only heard one skylark.  At one point I thought I might have heard a grasshopper warbler but couldn't be certain.

In the garden there have been no noteworthy birds apart from a brief appearance by a woodpecker , but there is an obvious reason for this:

Grey Squirrel

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. 

Hardly Any Butterflies or Bees?

I seem to remember I did a post in April a couple of years ago entitled "Loads of Bees."  Well the ongoing cold and damp spell has met that the exact reverse has been true and only now looks likely to improve.

There was a single small tortoiseshell on a group bike ride up the coast (cut short due to muddy conditions) but the only sighting in the garden has been a single red admiral fly past several weeks ago.  Elsewhere there was one unidentified white by the Tyne on Saturday and that's all.

Apart from the odd honey bee, bees have fared scarcely any better and this all in spite of forget-me-nots being in full flower and a reasonable recovery by the garlic mustard, which seems a pity.

Up until Friday last week all I had seen worth noting was a queen wasp which took up brief residence in the summer house and a couple of visits from bee imitators.

Queen Wasp

Beefly

Tapered Dronefly

I think I'm right about the tapered dronefly, also having had a common dronefly to compare it with.

Then of Friday, a little rare sunshine produced a bit of a turnaround.  As well as usual visitors in the shape of tree bumblebee, common carder bee and buff-tailed bumblebee, I was particularly pleased to see a tawny mining bee on garlic mustard a couple of times.  I did think I'd seen one in the front garden last year but it was too brief a sighting to be certain.

Tawny Mining Bee

I thought I'd seen a buffish mining bee on dandelion about a week ago but the mobile phone photo was too poor to be sure but one turned up in the garden on Friday.  It is of course the most common mining bee.

Also notable was a large early bumblebee.

Buffish Mining Bee

Early Bumblebee

It is interesting to think that in spite of the overall paucity of bee species, early bumblebee has turned up more often than usual.  I reckon I've seen four already.

The obvious missing party in all this however is the red mason bee, which was around in big numbers last year when I was confident several nested in my bug hotel.  Maybe it's not checkout time yet.

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...

A ladybird spot or two

On Saturday I went on another Natural History Society walk at The Spetchells in slightly gloomy weather - again.  Compared to the Morpeth one a few weeks ago it was a bit disappointing.  It was a large group of about 20, which limited the opportunity to share sightings with others and not as well organised.

The first twenty minutes of a planned two hours were actually spent foraging in the undergrowth at the edge of the Tyne leading to a sudden yomp to the Spetchells, by which time I had captured what I thought was an interesting bee but couldn't catch up with the leaders to check.  In fact it was probably just a buffish mining bee that was carrying a lot of pollen.

Buffish Mining Bee with pollen

I had been hoping to see an ashy mining bee but as far as I'm aware the subject didn't come up.  

Nevertheless some interesting sightings occurred.  While still next the Tyne I caught sight of a very small ladybird that only two spots.  It was of course a two-spot ladybird.  This was quite pleasing as it was the first time I've identified one of the less common ones.

Two-Spot Ladybird

As the main group didn't manage to get more than about three hundred yards into The Spetchells, some including myself foraged ahead.  I managed to find two dingy skipper and a couple of red-tailed bumblebees.  The photos aren't up too much, in the latter case because of the bug tube I used.

Dingy Skipper

Red-tailed Bumblebee

There were some nifty wee bees moving around the clumps of speedwell that eluded both camera and bug box though I did get a good view.  Apparently they were red-girdled mining bees.  The diversity of mining and nomad bees never ceases to amaze!

Before we got ushered back, I did a quick check for common blues but the bird's foot trefoil was only just starting to show and none were to be found.  I did however catch up with a single red admiral catching a fleeting bit of sunshine - the first I have seen this summer.

Back at the Tyne we could hear but not see a singing blackcap and earlier there had been a few willow warblers and someone reported hearing a garden warbler.  I don't even know what they sound like.

Still unsure about what to do about the ongoing jackdaw invasion, it was however interesting to observe that one of the visitors is slightly leucistic on both flanks.

Slightly leucistic Jackdaw

Loads of Bees

The sun has been out and the sightings have continued to pile up.

Last Tuesday (19th)  I went to the Spetchells, partly hoping that the buffish mining bees wouldn't be out in force enabling me to search for other species such as ashy or tawny mining bees.  In fact they were out in their usual tens of thousands making it hard to concentrate on much else and Gooden's Nomad Bee was again the only non-bumblebee seen.  Both were up to their usual tricks.

Buffish Mining Bees

Gooden's Nomad Bee

In fact the main other species of note were a nice small tortoiseshell and the first speckled wood I have seen, which meandered out of some woodland when I was on my way back to the bike.

Small Tortoiseshell

Speckled Wood

As suspected after seeing a few males last week, female orange tips started visiting the garlic mustard crop on my back fence, annoyingly flying off again as soon as the camera was ready to fire.  By contrast the first comma of the season to visit, much earlier than last year, hung around for a good few minutes.

Comma

But sightings and my knowledge frontier really took off on Saturday when I went on a bee and hoverfly walk with the Natural History Society of Northumbria at Morpeth. 

I knew there was a possibility of seeing a tawny mining bee but it was a bit of a surprise to find one running the line at Morpeth Rugby Club before we had even set off on the walk!

Tawny Mining Bee

Although my expertise was considerably outshone by others in the group, I can take credit for seeing the first bee after we set out - a species I'd never heard of before Saturday, the hawthorn mining bee.  I was also the first to identify a cuckoo bee crawling around some undergrowth that turned out to be a vestal cuckoo bumblebee.  In the meantime, a rather nice looking wee blood bee had turned up.  Apparently it's tricky to be sure about precisely which kind of blood bee it was as there are many varieties.

Blood Bee

However our most spectacular sighting was a fly, Ferdinandea cuprea, identified confidently by our leader Mark as only having been recorded in Northumberland on five previous occasions.  I don't do flies other than bee imitators but collected the evidence nevertheless:

Ferdinandea cuprea

By contrast this cream spot ladybird is apparently our most common UK lady bird species.  I must say I had no idea of this.  Perhaps I should get more interested in spotting ladybirds though it does seem to involve a lot of crawling around in the undergrowth.

Cream Spot Ladybird

Perhaps it was the next sighting that got me thinking the most.  I'm sure I read somewhere that there are only two nomad bees occurring in the North East - Gooden's and Marsham's - but this one was identified as a Lathbury's Nomad Bee:

Lathbury's Nomad Bee

A bit hard to see but there is a definite red stripe at the top of the abdomen.

Louise who spotted it says there are definitely five species of nomad bee in the North East and this has got me thinking that the one I've been seeing in the garden may not be a Gooden's as I have tended to assume.  I must get a closer look at it when the sun comes out again.

Another nice sighting was an early bumblebee queen, the first I've seen this year:

Early Bumblebee Queen

And another I'd never even heard of let alone seen before was the sandpit mining bee.

Sandpit Mining Bees

There's a clear lesson to be taken from this - it's amazing what you can see on a half mile walk, especially when you're with people who know what they're talking about!