Windswept
The weather went completely insane today, blowing a gale the like of which we haven’t seen since the old privy roof took off and tried to take out a power line, back in December. In fact, en route to collecting … Continued
Common Carder
My day began well, with a productive invertebrate hunt while the morning was still cool after overnight frost. Then things went badly awry, when I decided to tidy up the little free-standing container pond on the patio, and discovered that … Continued
Ploughing her own furrow
When I saw this bee I said “YES!!”, because I thought I’d found a female Orange-legged Furrow Bee (Halictus rubicundus) – a species I’ve only recorded here a couple of times previously. This was shortly followed by “Aaargh – NO!!”, … Continued
Multitasking
I was impressed with the casual way this Hairy-footed Flower Bee used his front feet to clean some of the pollen from his proboscis as he flew from one aubretia flower to another. I sometimes eat while on the move, … Continued
Wild swimming
There was a bit of an incident chez nous this afternoon. When we first installed our little wildlife pond we used to net it in the autumn, so that the huge number of leaves that come down from all our … Continued
Garden lists
This morning I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and wrote out a list of everything that needs doing to bring the garden back into some kind of order, trying to divide the elephant task into … Continued
Dark Chocolate
Compared with last year, this invertebrate season has got off to a rather slow start. This is especially true of hoverflies, of which I’ve only recorded four species so far, compared with the eight I’d seen by the same point … Continued