Bee Hat

It's going to take a bit of working out to see what this actually is. So I'll let you out of your collective misery and tell you.

Although I have to say, Nevermore will know what it is straight away, so she's excused from reading on.

This is a blue banded bee burrowing deep into a salvia flower. The purple furry bit is the top of the salvia flower, which has lowered down onto the bee's head. The two green bits either side of the purple furry bit are the bee's eyes. And what looks like two ear muffs either side of the green bits (i.e. the eyes) are actually it's front legs. With me so far?

If you have a look at this in large, which is of course recommended for any blue banded bee, you can actually see the dimples on it's wings. Which I think is rather cool because I didn't know that blue-banded bees had dimples. And you can also see that the wing pattern is really different from a regular honey bee.

I love these bees. Bet you didn't know that!

Thanks to everyone for the lovely comments, stars and heart for my little kangaroo yesterday. A couple of people asked if I was scared. No, not at all. The only scary bit was that it would bound away before I got a decent image.