Multitasking

So it's not only women who can do two things at once. I saw this hairy-footed flower bee fly into the dead-nettle patch, and stood at the edge of the flower bed, camera poised, waiting for him to come back out so I could try for a flight shot. Perplexed when he hadn't emerged half a minute later, and slightly irritated because it was now starting to rain, I stepped in gingerly among the plants and bent down to see what he was up to. Feeding was the answer, while also sheltering from the weather in a neat little lean-to, where a crocosmia leaf had bent over against the lamium. Genius.

Tonight's second photo is another plumpie, but one I've never seen before: it's a female, but bicoloured rather than the usual black. Falk says, "[a] small proportion of plumipes females are beige rather than black and look like robust males...", but this isn't one of those either, being both smaller than the males who were feeding nearby, and very strongly marked. She is quite definitely Anthophora plumipes however, and her exotic looks were attracting a lot of attention this afternoon from the boys. It's a good day when I find something so unusual in the garden.