Orange-vented Mason Bee

I found it very satisfying to step out of my front door this morning, take two steps across the lawn, and find this pretty female Orange-vented Mason Bee (Osmia leaiana) nectaring on the thistle I've left there. I wish I could persuade more people to appreciate thistles - they're superb plants for attracting pollinators.

Osmia leaiana is quite a common bee across southern England and the Midlands, though the males especially are small enough to be easily overlooked, and the females spend a lot of time buried face-down in their favourite flowers (common thistles and knapweed are especially favoured), with just the abdomen and its bright orange pollen brush sticking up. Adults fly from May to August. The females build their nests in cavities in wood, including both cut wood such as fence posts, and holes in both live and dead trees; and line and seal their nest cells with chewed-up leaf mastic. In gardens this is one of the species that will exploit a bee hotel. 

In other, highly satisfying news, I'd like to welcome to the world the three Southern Hawkers that emerged from our wildlife pond overnight. Checking the pond - as I do every day, but by now more from habit than in expectation - I nearly dropped the camera in the water when I spotted the first exuvia. While I was photographing it I realised that the bokeh to the shot included a second larval case, and a quick search then disclosed a third. My extra photo tonight shows two of the three exuviae; the third was round the back of the clump of pond sedge.

For the last couple of years we've had a single Southern Hawker emerge from this very small pond, but this is the first time we've ever had more than that. I'm pretty chuffed that this year there are three, and particularly impressed that the little gang managed to make a synchronised emergence. The fact that this has happened a good month after the Southern Hawker eruption from our neighbours' much larger (and therefore presumably cooler) pond, just a few hundred metres down the lane, is one of those things that makes you realise that however much you think you know, nature is always going to keep surprising you.

R: C3, D10.