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95/366 The buzz of new life
04 Saturday Apr 2020
04 Saturday Apr 2020
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19 Tuesday Nov 2019
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autumn insects, bees, British insects, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, hoverflies, ivy flowers, moth larva, Red Admiral, wasp
It may be late autumn, with shortening days, chill winds and cooling nights but, when the sun comes out as it did yesterday, the insects also come out to warm themselves and feed. During my walk around Cosmeston I spotted a late Red admiral butterfly and then, further on, where ivy was still flowering, a host of flying mini-beasties: hoverflies, various bees and wasps. And, near them, tucked away further down on a bramble leaf, even a caterpillar, probably a moth larva though I’m not sure which species.
16 Monday Sep 2019
Posted autumn, insects, nature, wildflowers
in14 Saturday Sep 2019
Posted 365DaysWildin2019, autumn, insects, nature, plants
inI heard them before I saw them.
I’d been smelling the ivy flowers all day, as I walked one of my local circuits, though Cosmeston along to Lavernock and back to Penarth along the coastal path. But I hadn’t noticed any open flowers until I heard the loud buzzing coming from the ivy ahead of me on the path. It was alive with various species of bee and fly and hoverfly. And then I spotted what I was looking for – the ginger fluff and black-and-yellow-stripes of Ivy bees (Colletes hederae), my first for 2019.
You can find out more about these handsome creatures in my previous blogs here and here.
03 Tuesday Sep 2019
Posted 365DaysWildin2019, autumn, flowers, insects, nature, wildflowers
inTags
bees, Devil's-bit scabious, hoverflies, insects on scabious, Painted Lady, scabious, Small white butterfly
At this time of year, the delicate lilac tinge of Devil’s-bit scabious casts its imperial purple shadow across the meadows at Cosmeston and at Lavernock. I love it, and I’m not the only one.
It’s proving extremely popular as a late-summer early-autumn source of nectar for all manner of bees, butterflies and hoverflies. Here are a few I’ve seen in recent days …
26 Tuesday Feb 2019
Posted 365DaysWildin2019, insects, nature, spring
inTags
bees, British insects, climate breakdown, climate change, hoverflies, insects emerging early, spring in winter
For the second day in a row, places in north Wales have posted record high winter temperatures and, though a chilly breeze has kept things a bit cooler here in the south, it’s still much warmer than it should be. And these unseasonable highs have been responsible for the early awakening of much insect life. On today’s wander I spotted several hoverflies and bumblebees, a Brimstone butterfly flew past my house earlier, and the cherry tree outside my window has been buzzing with bees all day. It’s wonderful to see all these critters out and about again but it’s also a worry as winter’s probably not finished with us yet.
31 Friday Aug 2018
Posted flowers, insects, nature, wildflowers
inTags
#FloralFriday, bees, British insects, British wildflowers, bumblebees, Devil's-bit scabious, flies, hoverflies, insects on scabious, Lavernock Nature Reserve, Succisa pratensis
Devil’s-bit scabious (Succisa pratensis) has a beautiful flower that paints the wildflower meadows at Lavernock Nature Reserve in shades of purple lusciousness and provides some very welcome late summer nectar and pollen to a host of insects, particularly bees, flies and butterflies.
And that name? Well, the story goes that the devil was not pleased that the plant’s medicinal properties were healing the skin conditions of people suffering from bubonic plague and scabies so, in a fit of rage, he tried to kill off the plant by biting off the ends of the plant’s roots. Ever the party pooper!
13 Wednesday Jun 2018
Posted insects, nature, wildflowers
inTags
#30DaysWild, #plantsforpollinators, #WildflowerHour, 30 Days Wild, bees, bramble, bumblebees, flies, hoverflies, Rubus fruticosus agg
Last Sunday, on #WildflowerHour, the challenge was to find #plantsforpollinators, i.e. to find wildflowers that support a variety of the insects that act as pollinators. I had found several different insects on Bramble flowers last week so posted a series of photos that showed them. And that gave me the idea for day 13 of #30DaysWild, namely to see what insects I could find on the local Bramble bushes. It was overcast and a bit cooler today, so I didn’t see as many butterflies as last week, but there were bees and bumblebees, flies and hoverflies, one butterfly, and a number of bugs and beetles. Here they are …
03 Tuesday Apr 2018
Tags
bees, bumblebee, flies, hoverflies, ladybird, minibeasts, signs of spring
‘If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.’
~ E. O. Wilson (1929 – ), American biologist, environmentalist, author
24 Sunday Sep 2017
Tags
bee mating frenzy, bees, bees on ivy, British bees, Colletes hederae, Ivy bee, Ivy bee mating ball, ivy flowers
Some days are just magical! I went out looking for birds – instead I got mobbed by Red admiral butterflies while walking along the coastal path, which made me grin like a Cheshire cat, and then I found these little buzzers.
They’re Ivy bees (Colletes hederae) and, as their name suggests, they feed on ivy flowers so they don’t appear until early autumn, when most other bees are winding down activities for the year. With an orange woolly thorax and orange-and-black striped abdomen, these bees are easy to identify, though Colletes hederae was only described as a separate species back in 1993 (before that it was confused with two other species of Colletes). Ivy bees only arrived in Britain from Europe in 2001 but have since gradually spread across southern England and in to south Wales: the extent of their spread is being tracked by BWARS, the Bees, Wasps and Ants Recording Society, so please do log your sightings, either on their website here or with your local records centre.
I had seen my first Ivy bees for the year the previous week but this new sighting was more special because it was a colony. Though the Ivy bee is a solitary bee (it doesn’t form a hive), a group of females will often excavate their individual burrows and underground chambers together in a sandy bank or similar area of loose earth. And, as the BWARS website explains, male bees often wait by the burrows for females to return and then pounce on them. When the other males spot what’s happening, they also want a piece of the action, jumping on the mating couple to form a writhing mass or mating ball. I was lucky enough to see one of these happen, as shown below.
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