Brown-banded Carder-bee

A very open area of grassland near the Kent coast wasn't the most comfortable place to be on the hottest day of the year, but a strong breeze made the sweltering temperatures more bearable. However, they also made macro photography almost impossible!

I spent some time stalking Brown-banded Carder-bees which were busy foraging on the last  of the Red Clover flowers. Like all bumblebees, they rarely stop, so despite taking many pictures, few were in focus! This isn't my best work, but it's a species I've never knowingly seen before, so I wanted to preserve it for posterity. Brown-banded Carder-bee is a southern bee that is strongly associated with areas of tall, but open, grasslands supporting a good proportion of perennial plants. It used to be widespread in lowland Britain but declined substantially during the 20th century. It is now showing a local recovery in some areas. Other interesting invertebrates spotted during the day included the first Wasp Spider of the year (see extra).

At the end of the day we headed into Ramsgate to try and find the accommodation we'd booked for the night. This was more difficult than it should have been as the postcode provided took us to the centre of town, which has an intricate web of narrow one-way streets. We eventually parked and set out on foot, only to find that we were in entirely the wrong place - we didn't want the main part of the High Street, but were actually looking for High Street, St. Lawrence. Having wasted about an hour we eventually found it quite easily.

We then meandered down towards the harbour, to look for a place to eat, finding lots of interesting buildings and plants on the way. When we finally made it, the whole area was rammed with people and we didn't feel like queuing up at the only fish and chip shop we could see, particularly as the heat meant that neither of us were very hungry. We spent some time gazing over the harbour (see extra), whose turquoise water was full of mullet, before heading back to our room via a Tesco 24 where we purchased a £3 Meal Deal that was just perfect!