Tiny Miner

Although the Tinies begged me to blip them today, I had to go with my first-of-season miner (Andrena) bee!  These little bees are the largest genus in the family Andrenidae, and are found in almost every continent in the world.  With over 1,300 species, it is one of the largest of all bee genera.In the US, there are over 400 bees in this family.  So, that is a long way of saying that I have not id'd it beyond Andrena Mining Bee.  Hey, I'm happy to have gotten this far on an ID!..

In addition to a small number of miners, there were lots of honey bees and a few big lazy bumble bees on hand.  I got an interesting shot of a honeybee on foliage that I rather like - it's posted HERE on FLickr.  

I also had some fun with reflections in rain drops this morning just after the skies cleared.  My favorite is this one of a drippy primrose.

As soon as it quit raining, Madame and Monsieur showed up and they've been sporadically working on the nest box in the garden throughout the day.  They are not used to me, so fly when I go outside - time will fix that, I'm sure.  Monsieur is continuing to show off his hunting skills with today's prime feature being a large dark caterpillar of some sort.  Yum.

Thanks to JDO for hosting Tiny Tuesday this month - be sure to check out the wonderful entries!

TTFN, 
Debbi

Late breaking news:  The Tinies are really being relentless about this upcoming Blip Trip.  See Extras and you'll understand what I mean.  Even Phoebe didn't deter them from their mission...