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...

Mainly About Bees

The first honeybees have started to show in the garden but so far no butterflies.  This is partly down to bad weather but partly because I chopped back the garlic mustard extensively last year expecting it to grow back quickly.  It hasn't and so little reason for any orange tips or green-veined whites to visit.  In fact I have only seen two orange tips so far this Spring - one from the bus at Winlaton Mill and one yesterday on the path up to the wood from Blackhall Mill.  

Honey Bee

I forgot to mention last time that I have seen a treecreeper climbing the birches at the back - about three times now - and there was a jay briefly in the trees. A greenfinch and a regular chiffchaff have been heard but not seen.

Last week I took a trip up to Edinburgh, where the weather was a good bit more favourable if a bit breezy.

I made straight for the Royal Botanic Gardens as it was known that a good number of flowers would already be in bloom.  In fact I was quite surprised to see that most of the rhododendrons were already in full bloom. 

Apart from buff-tailed bumblebee queens, there were a few carder bees around possibly including the paler form and a red-tailed bumblebee queen.  In the woodland garden, there were a few flying around a form of broom that seemed to have very white tails.

Doubling back North of the cafe, there were about 20 male hairy-footed flower bees nectaring on a plant called Munstead Blue.  Then I noticed that there was one that appeared to have an azure blue spot on its thorax.  After some effort I managed to capture it and it proved to be a small blue sticker bearing the number 12.

Hairy-footed Flower Bee

Same with sticker

How that can have happened is anybody's guess.  Maybe it had just come off the subs' bench?  Anyway it was still flying around quite happily when I visited the spot again two days later.

A visit to Malleny Garden at Balerno the next day looked less promising as there was very little that was already in bloom.  However the first tree bumblebee I have seen this year was rooting around in some undergrowth and was shortly followed by a flypast by my first comma butterfly this year.  Even better, I managed to capture this item, which proved as I had guessed to be a garden bumblebee.

Garden Bumblebee

So not at all a bad result - even though the noted doocoot was totally deserted - before I returned early to sample the entertainments of the City Centre.  Incidentally the comma was the only butterfly apart from an unidentified white I saw on the whole trip - a testament to the unfriendly weather up to now.

Here on a brief ice cream stop, I caught up with another red-tailed bumblebee nectaring on the dandelions near Princes Street.

Red-tailed Bumblebee

It looks like a male.

On my last day in Edinburgh I went back to the Royal Botanic Gardens and got into some more interesting parts of the Woodland Garden.

Here I spotted a goodish number of small bees working a flower border.  They were quite nippy and tricky to catch.  On investigation, I was surprised to find one of the bees trapped has a clear blue luminescence, which would seem to point to blue mason bee.  This is a species I've never seen before but does occur in the Edinburgh area, so I'm seeking expert confirmation.

Blue Mason Bees?

Male Blue Mason Bee?

I revisited the spot where I thought I might have seen white-tailed bumblebees two days before and managed to trap a suspect.

White-tailed Bumblebee?

Well it certainly has a white tail but I'm not entirely convinced by this not great photo.  It was bigger than the others I saw and the stripes aren't unambiguously 'lemony'.  My field guide says sometimes best to record them as bombus locurum agg, i.e. not too sure.

Lastly, I was quite amused on my way back to the guest house by the antics of this crow by the Water of Leith. It has obviously learned to pan for insects in the shallows as well as to ignore the anguished cries of owners of disobedient dogs.

Low Force and High Force Wind

On Saturday I joined up with Jennifer and Joe who are walking the Pennine Way in stages.

We met at Middleton-in-Teesdale to do the section to High Force.  Unfortunately I 'hit the wall' at about four miles and only made it to Low Force, the easy access to High Force from the nearby hotel having closed about 15 minutes before I got there. 

High Force

We saw surprisingly little wildlife during the couple of hours or so.  We thought there was a flock of fieldfares in some trees and there were three butterflies, one of which was a red admiral and a few buff-tailed bumblebee queens.  Birdwise there was the odd lapwing and curlew plus a few pied wagtails.

One surprise though was three completely white mallards that paddled their way across the Tees below Low Force.  Apparently this almost certainly means they were escapees as mallards held domestically are often bred to lose their natural colours.

We actually saw more birds while driving around the moors from place to place: partridge, a possible cuckoo, red grouse and short-eared owl.  And many skylarks.

A buff tailed bumblebee queen finally landed in my garden the other day.  So far they hadn't settled.

Queen Buff-tailed Bumblebee

Due to poor weather I hadn't been out on the bike for a long time apart from a couple of short refresher rides.  Again not much was seen but having got stopped at the level crossing at Wylam, I took a snap of the grey heron that frequently resides there.

Heron

Anyway, on Sunday I took advantage of what had been an excellent weather forecast for a ride up the coast to Cresswell and Druridge - except that the non-stop sunshine expected never happened and I was buffeted all day by a heavy onshore breeze that made me wish I'd taken my winter gloves!

On the Blyth estuary I got a couple of nice views of shelduck and redshank on the mudflats.

Shelduck

Redshank

I've always liked shelduck.

I did a detour around the Newbiggin area in search of Sandy Bay where rarities sometimes turn up - notably a bluethroat recently- but couldn't find it and made a quick exit to escape the Easter festivities.

At Cresswell and Druridge the most notable sighting was my first bar-tailed godwits, which turned up in both locations.  The one of Cresswell has spilled some weed on itself.

Bar-tailed godwit

I had hoped for avocets, which have recently appeared at both locations but unfortunately no luck and the spoonbill at Druridge didn't show either.  

Nevertheless there was a reasonable tally of further sightings recorded including a little egret in the corner at Cresswell, sanderling, lapwing, canada and greylag geese, shoveler, teal, wigeon, lapwing and several more shelduck

Lapwing

Shoveler

Unsurprisingly no butterflies were seen.

Exciting Springtime Sightings

 Starting with a bit of bad news, I found this dead great tit in the garden last week.  

Great Tit

I sort of assumed that it had crashed into the summerhouse, but on inspection it seemed to have a wound on its upper breast so maybe got nobbled by something.

Yesterday, I went on the first big trip of the year with son and fiancee to Leighton Moss, which provided a sufficient parade of sightings to justify even the £9 entry fee for non-RSPB members.

We saw a good number of marsh harriers flying at considerable height, which surprised me a bit.  On previous occasions in the Netherlands and at Leighton Moss before, I'd been used to seeing them flying low looking for prey.  Often they were in groups of two or more so I supposed that it was some sort of pre-mating routine, disturbed by occasional buzzards.  Anyway, I was delighted to get a photo of one in flight with my pocket camera, even though it wasn't brilliant.

Although we didn't manage to see one, we did hear numerous bitterns booming, which was a first time for me.  I must say 'booming' is a bit of a misnomer.  As one of the signs pointed out, it sounds much more like someone blowing over the top of an old-fashioned glass milk bottle.

Also not seen was the bearded tit.  We hadn't really expected them to show at this time of year although apparently they are still around.

One bird that is present is the ring-necked duck and I thought I might have seen one at distance from the tower.  In fact it proved to be just another tufted duck.

Shortly afterwards, heading for lunch I spotted some small red fungi next to the path.  I think they are called scarlet elf cups.

At the last hide we visited there was a view over several bits of land sticking out into the water, surrounded by various ducks.  A group of twitchers reckoned there was a water pipit working its way along one of them.  Unfortunately, try as we might, we couldn't confirm or deny it as a sighting as the photos we took of the wee bird were all too blurry.  Apparently it had been identified earlier by someone using a powerful telescope, so presumably correctly.

Overall, there were just too many photos to post individually, so I've amalgamated them together in  brief video.  Unfortunately there is no background music as that now costs extra from Microsoft!

Onshore and Inland

Having survived a cold snap over the past week, I decided on a trip to the coast on Thursday after dropping my ebike off for a service.  I'd thought about concentrating on birdwatching but decided to meet a friend instead, and actually saw a couple of things anyway.

Walking into Cullercoats there was a stonechat on the promenade railing and a woman drew my attention to a kestrel hovering for long periods over the foreshore.

Kestrel

I've never had the chance to capture a hovering kestrel with my wee camera before so it was a pleasing result.

Having collected my bike again, I saw what I initially thought was a woodpecker of some kind crossing my path at the top of the Byker Link track, where there is a bit of a flytipper's paradise.  It had a stripey appearance that put me in mind of illustrations I had seen of a three-toed woodpecker.  Knowing it couldn't really be that I stopped and approached with camera in hand.  The bird took fright at my high vis jacket and made itself scarce but I saw it long enough to note that it was a leucistic blackbird.

The day after I was on a Naturewatch walk to Letah Wood near Hexham.  The main idea was to see the wild daffodils that grow there, which should have been showing well.  However the cold weather over the previous few days has held them back and it was hard to find a decent batch.

Wild Daffodils

There were plenty of birds singing but high up in the canopy and I only actually saw a robin and some woodpigeons.  

However, there was a very healthy tree fungus, probably a shelf fungus and a healthy colony of wood ants.

Shelf Fungus

Wood Ants

The day after I was out again after visiting my son's new house in Crawford when we went along a nice track near Leadhills.  Before we got soaked in a sudden downpour we had managed to see all of curlew, lapwing, buzzard, red kite, meadow pipit, pied wagtail, and raven.

However most sightings were at distance above the horizon.  At one point a lapwing was mobbing a buzzard.  It must be because nesting time is near.

Today I briefly saw the first bumble bee of the year in the garden and at the tennis courts there were several honey bees struggling across the surface. They must have come out too early.