Humming

Despite a chilling north-easterly wind, the bright sunshine brought out a raft of invertebrates in the garden this morning, and the whole area seemed to be gently humming. My species counts are still well down on last year - twenty bees to last year's twenty seven, and a very disappointing thirteen hoverflies to last year's twenty one - but the season is now getting into its stride after the disastrously wet and cold March we had to endure. Sadly I didn't record the first damselfly of the year today, as I did on the same date last year, but as I said to R, "We're now in the zone, so please keep an eye out - it could happen any day."

I couldn't decide between today's photos, and as it's now late and I have another busy day scheduled tomorrow, I've finally decided to stop havering and post them both. The dotted bee-fly wins by a long nose, partly for being a dotted bee-fly, and partly because I don't think I've ever posted an insect feeding from grape hyacinth before. This isn't really surprising because we don't have any grape hyacinths in our garden, but our next-door neighbours have them on top of their garden wall and all over the verge in front of their house. I was checking this verge for hairy-footed flower bees this morning when I caught a higher-pitched hum above the plumpie buzzing, and tracked down the bee-fly from the noise she was making.

My second photo is a lovely fresh specimen of Andrena nitida, the grey-patched mining bee, feeding on the blossom of our little crab apple tree. Sadly the blossom was quite damaged by the stormy weather we had last week, so it's not as photogenic as usual, but it's still attracting a range of bees and hoverflies. For the record, this is the first A. nitida I've seen this spring, which is over a fortnight later than my first sighting in 2022.