Dene Park

In the grassy area by the car park this female Andrena was happily stocking up on pollen!

Bees at Trosley

While out with the British Butterfly Conservation Society Kent group at Trosley Country Park, I saw a lot of mining bees flying fast and low over the sparse grass of several areas of the chalk downland. Most of these were probably Andrena flavipes, the Yellow Legged Mining Bee. 

However this male appears to have a slightly reddish tail, and I think might possible be a male Andrena chrysosceles 

This I am fairly sure must be Nomada fucata, the cuckoo bee of Andrena flavipes.

Bourneside Meadow and Andrena haemorrhoa

Andrena are really fascinating solitary bees and there must be so much to learn about their mysterious lives. Today I was hoping for hoverflies but also came across quite a few Andrena which seemed to be flying in the canopy of trees. For example first there were quite a few Andrena in the twigs and branches of the Great Sallow bushes, Salix caprea, by the Red Pond along the Access Trail, of which I only caught one.

I don't know for sure that there were any more bees here than anywhere else, all I can really say is that I spent quite some time looking for hoverflies there, and that I saw mainly bumblebees visiting the catkins and mainly Andrena bees in amongst, and occasionally settling on, the branches. I think the Andrena may also have visited the catkins rarely, but I got the impression that most of the time they were not looking for food, just flying. I imagine that if you are a bee subject to predation by birds, then you are probably safer in amongst the twigs and branches, than out in the open. However I do also wonder whether there is a social feature in gathering together as well.

After quite a lot of time by the Red Pond I moved down to the riverplain of the River Bourne and ended up looking for bees on the dandelions in the damp meadow by Bourneside Farm. There was almost nothing there, but it was getting on towards 4 in the afternoon and I rather suspect the dandelions become less attractive to insects after about the middle of the afternoon.

There was at least one chiff-chaff in the treeline along the boundary with the land below Easterfield Bungalow, and while trying to get photographs there of the opening leaves of the native Common Alder, Alnus glutinosa, I saw some rapidly flying insects moving quickly in, and just outside the edge of, the canopy of the trees at about head height. They were moving so fast I couldn't even tell for sure whether they were bees or flies and I spent a lot of time trying, and failing (I need a bigger net?), to catch one. I would say that as far as numbers go, there were at least half a dozen and probably into double figures as a total. In the end I eventually caught one insect and that turned out to be a male Andrena haemorrhoa upon closer examination and under the binocular microscope. The insects did all look quite similar in size and "jizz" and if asked I would have said it was more likely that they were all males, rather than a mix of males and females, and possibly all of the same species.

I have found Andrena haemorrhoa in several places in the local area, but this seemed to be a specific association with these trees and also a specific behaviour.  It could be that the bees were commuting back and forwards along the tree line towards a food source or other site, or perhaps they were just flying to and from with some sort of social purpose. It would be useful to see if the behaviour is repeated on different days and times of day, and also to see if the all the insects are really all male Andrena haemorrhoa.

Here is a picture of one, this time a female, I took a few hundred metres away up on the Access trail in May last year:

You can see the foxy red colour of the hairs on the thorax (even more intense in the female as compared to the male), the whitish hairs around the face, the orange-red hairs on the tail, and the rather shiny black colour of the main dorsal surface of the abdomen.

The unfolding alder leaves were very difficult to photograph because of the shallow depth of field. As the buds swell the two main scales may part slightly, partly exposing the leaves within.

The scales then roll fully back on themselves, allowing the leaves to start their main phase of expansion, looking slightly shiny or possibly sticky.

Andrenas at last

At last things are starting to move a bit, and I came across small numbers of these male Andrenas on the path bank of the main ride just past the triangle going anti-clockwise.

Followed by finding a male Eristalis intricarius on male catkins of Sallow or Goat Willow in the hollow further along the track - no photos good enough to print though! 

Whetsted Gravel Pits

The Reed Buntings down at the Gravel Pits, Emberiza schoeniclus, is now in full breeding plumage, with the head cap now so black you cannot easily pick out its eye. In contrast the white lenticels on the dark alder bark show out very clearly indeed:

The Grey Sallows, Salix cinerea, there are getting going. The male catkins are now starting to protrude their anthers, and the male trees stand out brightly in the otherwise slightly dull landscape.

Big Bud on Hazel

The buds of Hazel, Corylus avellana, are sometimes slightly pointed but are still characteristically Hazel, including the slightly fringed scales to the bud.

This bud is infected with Phytoptus avellanae, the Hazel Big Bud Mite, an Eriophyid mite. The highlights in this picture have been darkened a trifle. On the twig I think you can see the two types of hair found on Hazel shoots and petioles, the bases remaining of the silky silvery hairs, together with the stiffer, more bristly, maybe glandular, reddish hairs. The bud still has the silky fringes to the scales characteristic of Hazel. According to Wikipedia, two forms of P. avellanae exist, a gall causer and a vagrant form that has a more complex life-cycle and does not form galls

Cricket bat willows

I think I've found some cricket bat willows on the far side of the River Medway to the South of the parish boundary. There seems to be a short almost avenue (although the tree to the front of the group on the left hand side is actually an oak I think). The trees to the right are what I think to be genuine Cricket Bat Willows, usually referred to as Salix alba var. caerulea (Sm.) also known as a cultivar 'Caerulea', much more upright, with branches soaring upwards at an angle of between about 20 to 40 degrees (narrower than the type) from the more or less vertical trunk (although this particular one has been cleft into two, and would certainly be useless for bat manufacture).

Here is a close-up of some more of the trees on the right, ones with straighter trunks. You can start to get an idea of the ruggedly furrowed bark on the trunks, even at this distance. They are in a fairly typical "willow" environment, with the trees' roots half in and out of the roadside ditch.

This is a closer shot of the bark at about chest height, which is described for Salix alba in the Collins Tree Guide as "dark grey; rugged, criss-crossing ridges". It sort of seems to fit, although any decision on these colours can be a real snare and delusion. In fact this bark looks to me in close-up perhaps to be a mid-brown, but largely covered in grey lichen! If so, my ID here may be at error. However good old Clapham, Tutin and Warburg have the description of the species' bark just as "greyish, not peeling, fissured, the ridges forming a closed network". Wikipedia has the bark as "greyish-brown", even better.

Making cricket bats out of the trees is not so easy, and I doubt any of these trees would be much use. Here is a clear description of how it is done.
http://www.woodlands.co.uk/blog/practical-guides/cricket-bat-willow/

And here is more information on grading clefts for bat production, including the vexed issue of grain number - http://www.middlepeg.com/cricketbatwillow.htm. The trees for commercial bat production have to be grown carefully in a controlled plantation, and are harvested at between 15 and 30 years old:

Clearly at least one thing has gone wrong with this trunk below, resulting in a whole clump of stems springing out of what might be some small bolls on the left hand side, and a definite kink in the trunk. These won't be any good for making cricket bats! Commercially produced trees have to have any small side-shoots growing out from the straight trunk rubbed out - at a very early stage!

It's interesting to make the link between the trees and the finished product, as Milton Keynes Parks Trust have done here: http://www.theparkstrust.com/downloads/plants-and-trees/general/Making%20bats%20from%20cricket%20willow.pdf

In fact almost all trees commercially produced in England are from East Anglia, the majority of which are produced by J. S. Wrights of Great Leighs, Essex. Most of the clefts are exported to the Indian subcontinent where they are turned into bats - only a very small specialist industry of bat manufacture actually remains within the UK as seen in this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRc4QoRJDDo. Presumably then the finished bats are returned to England for sale in local shops, such as Kent Cricket Direct in Southborough.

Going back to the trees growing along the road to Hartlake, the young shoots are reddish-brown, particularly on their tops, but can look greyish in some lights - due to small short hairs covering the surface? Two year old stems are an olivaceous colour, clearly contrasting with the browner younger shoots.

Willows are also probably very useful for wildlife - here you can see what are probably beetle exit holes in the heartwood, exposed in this knotty wound. The surrounding lichens are also interesting!

This particular tree is probably also quite useful for wildlife:

And I think I may not be the only person (not surprisingly, they are SO interesting) blogging about willows!
http://blueborage.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/willows-and-water.html