Ta-da!

I was intending to head off to Slimbridge this morning, but when I stepped out of the door it was toasty warm, so I thought I'd better quickly check the garden for bees, and within seconds I'd spotted the first Hairy-footed Flower Bee of the year, on a patch of sweet violets in the top garden. This, of course, led to a much more organised invertebrate hunt, and within a few minutes I'd decided not to go birding after all, but to stay home and uncover a bit more of the garden instead. 

By lunchtime R and I had cut up the remains of the fallen greengage tree in the secret garden, and roughly cleared a patch of scrub in the wild garden so I could site a new log pile against the fence there. Then we had coffee and biscuits. Followed by more biscuits. And then R went out for a walk, leaving me to go back to hunting insects.

By this time it was cloudy and the wind was rising, making it appreciably colder than it had been first thing, so I wasn't too hopeful. But within a few minutes I spotted a male Plumpie on the pulmonaria in the front garden - justifying the work I did on the front border a couple of days ago - and shortly after that a second one turned up too. The fact that they had to expend energy bickering with each other instead of simply patrolling may not have been too good for them (though that said, for all their 'solitariness' these little bees always seem especially nervous when there are no others of their own kind around), but it worked for me because it meant that they needed to refuel quite frequently, and allowed me some perched photos like this one.

My second offering tonight suffers more than the main image from having been taken with 500mm of lens at close quarters: inevitably this results in a wafer-thin depth of field, even at f/9, and I could have done with some more to get the bee's face, tongue and nearer back leg as sharp as his body. But both the front garden boys were too fresh, fast, and skittish for me to get within macro range, and in the circumstances I'm moderately smug at having caught one of them in flight. As this is the first day of my Plumpie season, I've got plenty of time to aim for something better.