The access trail is just wonderful

Dr. Beverley Glover from the Plant Sciences Department in Cambridge suggests that the surface of petals has multifaceted functions. There appear to be projecting cells or groups of cells - these can be extremely useful perhaps for insect feet to grip onto, or for the light to be concentrated - this may make the petals look brighter, or perhaps rather more importantly the increased radiative energy input could warm the petals up - there is certainly evidence that bumblebees prefer warmer flowers.

Warmer nectar could also be important for bees searching for food on cold mornings - they have to warm themselves up, they may not want to have warm up the nectar they are drinking as well!

Flowers appear to have had such surface projections from an early stage in evolution. Flowers that don't have them, appear to have secondarily lost them.

Of course sallows don't seem to have these issues - they do not have petals, so clearly they do not have these projections? However they certainly seem to smell delicious at close range. They also attract huge amounts of insects, in conditions that may not always be the warmest! Here is a Bombus terrestris that is enjoying the sallow catkins along the outward path of the access trail at about 6 in the evening.

The Buff-tailed Bumblebee, Bombus terrestris, was accompanied by numbers of Bombus vestalis, the Southern Cuckoo Bumblebee. Here you can see the white tail and the yellow edges at the boundary of the tail, contrasting somewhat with the true orange of the front thoracic band. This looks like mimicry of the buff tail of the Buff Tailed Bumblebee!

The yellow at the tail is not always clear - hopefully this bee is still B. vestalis!

This is a better and therefore more reassuring shot, of the same bee. You can see the yellow edge to the white tail more easily at this angle. Note also the shiny thorax, easily seen in this photo.

Here is a close-up of the antenna - 12 segments altogether, rather than 13, shows it to be a female

Also on the sallow were one or two relatively small black bees - female flower bees, Anthophora plumipes. I haven't seen these on Sallow before, but there were plenty of males by this tree, but at ground level, nectaring off the Ground Ivy, Glechoma hederacea.

However when I looked at these photos of one of the other apparently small black bees there was clearly a bit of a red-tail, so realistically that led me to either Bombus lapidarius or Bombus ruderarius. I looked as closely as I could and the hind leg on the left looks as though any hairs on the rear tibia were black, not red, so that pointed to the commoner species, Bombus lapidarius. On the right hand wing you can also just see the pale cross bar in the small cell (first submarginal cell) at the front of the wing.

Yet more interest on the access trail

There were a few more Drone Flies on the Access Trail this evening and I think this rather more brightly coloured one was Eristalis arbostorum. Particularly the face appeared fairly well dusted white over the front surface, with only a slightly darker central smudge. The hind metatarsi were swollen to the width of the hind tibia, which were yellow at the base, dark at the apex, as also were the mid-tibia.

The thorax wasn't too furry, and the sides of the thorax below the wings were pale rather than black. I couldn't see the stigma on the wing clearly, but it seemed to be relatively small and unextended.

At the first Sallow on the outward path to Victoria Lane I found Anthophora longipes (several males and a likely female) on the Ground Ivy, Glechoma hederacea on the ground of the rabbit burrows, and many probable Bombus terrestris on the sallow catkins, together with its cuckoo parasite, Bombus vestalis, confirmed (probably) on ispot.

Bees on the Access Trail

To my surprise there were quite a few insects on the trunk of the largest Aspen tree at the start of the Access trail at just gone 4 p.m. (BST), and I think the first one I was able to get a start on was a species of Andrena - perhaps! Ian Beavis thought it might possibly be a male Andrena praecox, but would certainly need keying out.

Bee bank in Broadview

A really interesting day in the Gardens today, particularly as time was not too much of an issue, and the sun was beating down. Its still taking me a little time to get used to the new clocks (they went forward on Sunday morning) but it certainly gives extra time in the afternoon.

I wanted to look around by the Garden Design studio to see if I could find some lighter soil where the Andrena bees could be burrowing, but there was little on the move until I got to the office side - where I suddenly came across the "bee bank"!

This was really quite busy with many Melecta albifrons, presumably all looking for the opportunity to lay their eggs in Andrena tunnels!

But there were no Andrena about that I could see - although there were perhaps a few Anthophora plumipes around, at least one male was seen!

Motney Hill in mist then sun

Sunny Gardens at last

At last spring really seems to have arrived, and I spent nearly an hour in the College Broadview gardens just along a 10 metre long section of path looking at the insects in the afternoon sunshine, as well as listening to the birdsong in the background.

The first insect I put up to ispot was a pretty white-tufted small bee that turned out to be Melecta albifrons, a kleptoparasite usually of Anthrophora plumipes the Flower Bee. Melecta females are generally black in contrast and are supposed to look for the Anthophora aggregations and dig down to the nests to lay their eggs on the surface of Anthrophora's cells.

when the Melecta egg hatches out (one day before the Anthrophora eggs?) the Melecta larva which has fierce mandibles attacks the Anthrophora eggs and any other Melecta eggs and larvae, and the one surviving larva feasts on the Anthrophora food store until the Melecta adults emerge the following spring to repeat the whole process.

The pictures below are of he single male insect seen, apparently sunning itself on the variegated holly leaves by the garden design studio.

Also found nectaring off the Muscari, grape hyacinth, by the path were one or several Bombylius major, the Common Bee-Fly, again checked for species just in case.

A quiet and muddy Dene Park

Late on in the afternoon I took the Western boundary path of Dene Park and had a look at the boundary features of the different paths and component woods. Birds singing included Great Tits, Blue Tits, Long-tailed Tits and Robins. Magpies and Wood Pigeons were also noted.

Working on the convention that at a wood boundary there should be a bank with a ditch to the outside of the bank (so that the ditch spoil gets thrown inwards onto the woodsman's property) the boundary on the outside of the wood appears to be facing outwards on the inner side of this track!

The sign that claims the track as Fairlawne property is therefore apparently accurate, at least at this point! Here is a traditional hornbeam stub a little further along the same bank, where the bluebells appear more profuse or earlier on the bank itself than on the lower ground further into the wood.

I followed the track around, which dog-legs around in a curve to avoid the acute straight lines of the property boundary of the forest lodge. The ditches would seem to indicate straight lines to tie in with the existing outer fence boundaries of the property - in other words the track and the current wood edge seems to have seeped out from the sharp angle to form a more gentle curve and "fill in" the corner of the Fairlawne field. The bank along the second line is lined with oaks, not sweet chestnut.

I then followed the track further on the drive along the edge of the old wood and around the corner, with what may be a newer section of wood to the outside of the track which included sweet chestnut, a sallow and, further on, some planted horse chestnuts. The sallow bark is very broken up, but attractive in its own way,

This planting contrasted with the section to the inside of the track, which had chestnut coppice and then some quite good beeches in it further along. The older section had a good really substantial wood bank fronting on to the track, but without a good line of edging trees, just a boundary to the sweet chestnut coppice. I wonder why this bank is so sharp and deep as it drops down to the track.

In the horse-chestnut section of the wood to the outside of the track, there was a half-buried branch of unknown origin. This is typical habitat for the scarlet elf cup, Sarcoscypha coccinea, which I stumbled across on my second traverse. It had about five fruiting bodies visible, generally a bit worse for wear due to the ravages of time and maggots. I don't think this fungus has been officially reported as present at Dene Park as yet - its not on the species lists I have seen to date.

This fungus, sensu latu, is found across the Northern hemisphere, and is frequent in the UK from early winter through to early spring. The scarlet inner surface, broken edge, outer tomentum and short stipe were all found, but the spores with their elliptical fruiting bodies and oil droplets are microscopic and were not sought today. I must get that microscope up and running!

The Horsechestnuts themselves looked to be in deep trouble, perhaps from a combination of Cameraria, likely rabbit damage and possible blight.

The tree's bark above this is in a terrible way, cracking and peeling away,

and this is an interesting sap run on the same or a different horse chestnut, which could attract some hoverflies later in the year perhaps,

Still further along, the track becomes a bridleway and again there is a bank to the right hand side indicating an original wood boundary.

On the track something appears to have ripped off a few twigs with sallow catkins. I wonder what could have been responsible? Earlier on there was also a collection of freshly broken open and chewed up sweet chestnut fragments on the mossy ground.

A cooler Whetsted on Thursday

A few bumblebees were around but not as many as on Sunday last. Here is a poor picture of a Queen Bombus hortorum, I think, the only species I saw today.

There was also what I think is a blurry solitary bee seen later when I had a closer look at the photos

Plum blossom at Great Court

There was a robin singing in the Green Lane Wood just beyond the footpath junction. Is there a ring on its leg - I couldn't see it in a couple of later photos? The buds on this tree looked ready to break and there was plenty of Pleurococcus algae or look-alikes on the branches. There were a very few patches of lichens also visible.

The weather was still pleasant and the plum blossom was well out along the hedgerow. Its interesting to see the gradual unfolding of the sepals and petals to reveal the cluster of stamens with their tawny anthers, the lovely white of the petals and the eventual reflexing of the sepals. There is a single stigma and style in there as well!

The bumblebees were working the blossom well. Most seemed to be Bombus terrestris, like this individual with a thick necklace of parasitic mites. I think you can see its tongue seeking nectar. There doesn't seem to be any pollen in its leg pollen baskets.

There were quite a few Blue-tits deliberately seeking out the blossom. These may have been taking the pollen (internet sources, and also a couple of anthers were caught on camera "flicked" into the air) or the nectar (Birds of the Western Paleartic source). It looked more like nectar, but this needs further investigation.

And there was also a bullfinch or two moving more quietly and deeper in the branches.

Sallows and shovellers at Whetsted

It was a lovely warm afternoon and the sallows in the hedgerow between the gravel pits looked very promising. The insects seemed to be making their specific choices of the ripest or tastiest trees, and some were therefore much more popular than others, which appeared deserted.

Just beyond the first of the three big oaks, a sallow was attracting honeybees, filling their leg baskets with yellow pollen:

Moving on to other sallows in the row, as well as quite a few more Honeybees, Apis mellifera, I found three species of bumblebee, Bombus terrestris, rupestris and hypnorum. B. hypnorum, the tree honeybee is a very new species to the UK, having arrived since 2000, on the back of a significant expansion of its range in Europe. As this is a new species for me I had it checked out on ispot, and David Notton from the Natural History Museum, and Stuart Roberts from BWARS, amongst a few others, kindly confirmed the ID.

There was also a bee-fly, Bombylius major, hovering as it fed.