Sunday 14 April 2019

Tawny Mining Bee!

The other day in the garden I was stripping off part of the lawn (I say lawn, it is a small patch of grass that has suffered over the years with a swing and children on it!) in order to plant some wildflower seeds. I noticed a couple of bees going down into the grass and a day or so later discovered some small neat holes in the bare earth where I have planted the wildflower seeds.


I also rescued a bee from the house. Very sluggish, maybe just woken up from hibernation. After I took a few photos I put it in the lean to greenhouse to sort itself out, which it did after an hour and then flew off.

Having struggled to match it up in the Field Guide to Bees of Great Britain and Ireland by Steven Falk (this is probably due to my problematic colour vision and nothing to do with the excellent illustrations by Richard Lewington!), I posted one of the photos in this post on Twitter and thanks to Brigit Strawbridge Howard (http://beestrawbridge.blogspot.com/) I now know this is a female Tawny Mining Bee (Andrena Fulva).

Saturday 13 April 2019

Planting out peas, and our friendly robin(s)

It is still feeling quite cold out there with possible overnight frost forecast. However, it is time the peas went out into the big wide world!

Last year, they got nibbled by the local house sparrow tribe so this year the sparrows will have to look on in envy as I have bought ten metres of fine mesh to make an ark to protect them, at least until the flowers appear and they are big enough to withstand any small beaks.....

Inside the ark there are sticks for the peas to grow up, the only thing that does worry me is whether the peas will use the mesh to grow up as we'll need it for protecting other crops later in the season and it will be really tricky to untangle the peas if they do grow into it.







Now for our friendly robins! They really are getting quite unafraid of us and will come down to about a foot away from where we are working. There's definitely a pair of them, if it was two males coming into the same territory then there would be open warfare!

What you don't notice when you see them at a distance is that they whistle quietly to themselves whilst pottering about! They also make a quiet "pseep" noise. Both of them do sing, but it will be the male that is blasting it out from the hazelnut tree in the allotment!