The emergence of the first Hairy-footed Flower Bees of the year is always a really big deal for me, because they’re the perfect harbingers of spring: bright, beautiful, and lively, they never fail to fill me with optimism. That said, getting those early ones on camera can be a bit of a mission, because they’re always fast, and when they’re fresh and there aren’t many of their siblings and cousins around to distract them, they can also be extremely nervous and skittish.
Generally, the easiest way to track down a Hairy-footed Flower Bee is to listen for its buzzing, which is similar in timbre to that of a honey bee, but louder and more persistent. This morning though, someone on the other side of the village was using a power tool of almost the same pitch, and it was hard to pick out the Plumpies from the noise pollution. (“Do you complain about noise pollution when it’s you using power tools?” enquired R, who’s apparently decided that the time has arrived to begin living dangerously.)
Anyway, in the end I adopted the simple strategy of staking out a sunny patch of sweet violets in the top garden and waiting, and quite soon I was rewarded by the appearance of two Plumpies, who swirled around each other in mock-aggression for a couple of seconds, as they do, before the first landed on a sunlit leaf to bask, and this one popped in on the violets for a restorative drink of nectar. I was able to get photos of both without spooking either of them, because I was still using the 100-500 lens – which is so good in this kind of situation that a friend of mine calls it “the lazy man’s macro”. Or lazy woman, in this case.
I had some very overdue financial admin that needed tackling today, which limited the amount of time I could spend in the garden, but after capturing my Plumpies (yay!!) I finished scrub-cutting the yard, and zoomed around the top and front lawns and our section of the lane verge on the ride-on mower, giving them all the lightest of seasonal trims. It’ll be a while before I can cut the wild garden, which is a swamp at the moment, but I kid myself that all that water will hold back the grass, and stop it growing as fast as it is elsewhere. By the time I’d finished, the wind was getting up and the cloud was building, and with rain forecast for the end of the afternoon I didn’t feel too sad about calling it a day in the garden and going to my computer. The power edger was delivered at tea time, but I doubt I’ll get the chance to try it out before the weekend.
R: L2, C5, D20.
