Solitary Bees and others

Last weekend was spent at Rye Harbour attending a solitary bee course given by the author of 'The Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland' Steven Falk.  Solitary bees are a diverse and difficult group of insects to identify and though we spent some time using dichotomous keys and microscopes I still have great difficulty even getting to the correct genus.

Dasypoda hirtipes - the Pantaloon Bee

I can however fairly confidently identify the female of one particular species - Dasypoda hirtipes - known to its friends as the pantaloon bee and it is fairly obvious how it got its name.  This particular photo was taken the previous week when I was walking a bee transect at Rye Harbour looking for bumblebees, but this striking specimen caught my eye.

Anthophora bimaculata - Green-eyed Flower Bee

I also know now how to identify three species of Anthophora, or the flower bees.  One species is very common and a regular visitor to our garden - Anthophora plumipes - known as the hairy-footed flower bee.  The female is large, all black, and can be mistaken for a bumblebee.  Sadly the male is less distinctive but he is the one with the hairy feet.

The other two species we found this weekend are Anthophora bimaculata - the green-eyed flower bee - again, it is easy to see how it gets its name, and , a larger and quite squat bee - the four-banded flower bee, Anthophora quadrimaculata, though I think its scientific name derives from dark spots on the male's face.

Anthophora quadrimaculata - the Four-banded Flower Bee

Wasp Spider - Argiope bruennichi

The weekend was not confined to solitary bees and we took every opportunity to immerse ourselves in whatever aspect of nature presented itself.  Here is an example of the several wasp spiders that we found on a grassy patch.

Rare and less rare

It always amazes me what you find when you are not really expecting to see anything unusual.  Considering that our wildlife and their habitats are in such decline, we may get amazed far less often.  I photographed a couple of unusual flies recently and I thought one was a soldier fly and had no idea what the other one was.  It turns out that the soldier fly was indeed a soldier fly but not the common one I thought it was, in fact, though it is a European species it is very rare in the UK.  The other one that I thought was unusual was in fact fairly common.

Ornate Brigadier - Odontomyia ornata

The rare one was Odontomyia ornata or the ornate brigadier.  This one was sat on a yellow flag iris that a neighbour had given me and was just put in a corner of the pond waiting until I could plant it in its final position.  The most striking feature of the fly was the spotty face between the eyes.

Ornate Brigadier - Odontomyia ornata

Broad Centurion - Chloromyia formosa

The common one was on some wild forget-me-not in the tiny patch of garden that we like to call our annual meadow.  This too was a soldier fly - a broad centurion, Chloromyia formosa. This was a male.  The species is sexually dimorphic with the males having a bronze abdomen and the females a metallic green abdomen.  The most striking feature of this fly was the hairy eyes. a distinguishing feature of the species.

Knotted Hedge-parsley - Torilis nodosa

Yesterday, I was walking along the sea wall at Pett Level, doing a wildflower survey for the short-haired bumblebee reintroduction project.  This can get a bit tedious especially when you are seeing a lot of the same species time after time.  So I was delighted to notice a plant that I didn't recognize.  The flower looked a bit like an umbellifer, but instead of standing tall, it was in a low sprawling clump.  Despite the distinctive nature of the plant, it took me a long time to find it in the flower book because the illustration looked nothing like the plant, almost as though the illustrator had never seen one growing (maybe he hadn't).  It was knotted hedge-parsley, not a rarity but in decline.  The one thing that distinguished this umbellifer from others for me was not the small size but the way it has several flowers growing up the stem, each one opposite a single leaf.  I guess that's how it got it's 'knotted' name.

First post of the Year

It's time for the blog to come out of hibernation and shake a leg or six.  Spring caught me by surprise this year but I'll catch up eventually.

A couple of recent finds in the garden first - both lepidoptera, the first is a male orange-tip butterfly.  This species is the first to emerge from its chrysalis in spring, as opposed to those species that over winter as adults like small tortoiseshell, red admirals and peacocks which have been on the wing for a few weeks now.  This photo is also a first for me - the first time one has settled in the garden long enough for me to run and get the camera and do the necessary creeping up routine.

Orange-tip - Anthocharis cardamines

The second lepidopterous species was this moth that I disturbed from hibernation in our carport.  It is a nationally scarce species but is more common in the south-east thanks to the food plant of its caterpillars which is the common hop plant.  It is called a Buttoned snout.  The snout bit is obvious, but more imagination is needed to turn the markings on the wings into buttonholes.  This species is not often seen as it is rarely found in moth traps.

Buttoned Snout - Hypena rostralis

And just to show that the bumblebee season is now in full swing, I've got two species of bumblebee - the first one is the Early bumblebee (Bombus pratorum) that I found feeding on our dwarf comfrey.  This one is a worker - the tiniest (and cutest) first generation of the UK's smallest bumblebee.

A slightly blurred Early bumblebee - Bombus pratorum

The second is one of our biggest and rarest species the Ruderal bumblebee (Bombus ruderatus).  This one has been up and about long enough to find a nest and start to provision it with pollen as you can see from her shapely thigh.  This was found on a bumblebee survey in the back lanes of Romney Marsh.

Ruderal or Large Garden Bumblebee - Bombus ruderatus