Today’s good news in the garden was the appearance of the first first-brood Speckled Wood of the year, shortly followed by two male Mason Bees, which sat (unusually co-operatively) on the same patch of honeysuckle, and allowed me to compare them. One was quite definitely a Red Mason Bee (Osmia bicornis) – a charming little strawberry blonde chap, with a very round abdomen, a buff fringe, a white moustache, and ridiculously long antennae for his size. This one though was slightly bigger and much more untidy, with a greyish thoracic pile. It still looked like a Mason Bee, but… different.
Osmia cornuta said Obsidentify, with 98% confidence, of every photo I showed it. So I looked up Osmia cornuta, and discovered that its common name is the European Orchard Bee, and that although it’s a very new coloniser of the UK, it’s spreading rapidly, and is already regarded as a potentially important pollinator of British orchards. I then checked my records, and saw that I thought I’d found one in 2022 (two years after one was discovered in Cheltenham, just 20 miles down the road from here), but that on that occasion I’d been unable to get the record verified. Today though, when I submitted an enquiry to the BWARS group on Facebook, the Top Man agreed with me that this is indeed Osmia cornuta.
Given that historically, much of the land in this village and the surrounding area used to be laid to orchard, I find it quietly satisfying that this tiny orchard specialist has now found us. I’ll be keeping an eye out over the next few weeks for more specimens, and hoping in particular to find some of the charmingly punkish females.
Away from the garden, the bad news of the day was that R, coming back from a necessary trip to Stratford, and compelled to use an unusual route by the closure of Bidford Bridge for yet more repairs, was forced right to the edge of the narrow cross-country road by an oncoming truck, and hit a vicious pothole which not only burst his front near-side tyre, but buckled the wheel as well. I’m well aware that no public bodies have excess cash to splash around these days, but the state of the roads in this country is an absolute disgrace.
R: L2, C7, D12.
