The fox family

There are now seven foxes in the garden every night but getting them all in the same photo has so far proved impossible.  The best I have managed is six in one shot.  There are three cubs and the smallest of them is very naughty, rushing round pulling the tails of the bigger foxes and provoking its two sibling into fighting.  The others are the dog, the vixen and the vixen's two female cubs from last year.

Here is the vixen with a yearling on the left and a 2021 cub on the right.

When the dog charged in to join them the vixen rolled in submission, the cub scarpered and the yearling stood her ground and there was a bit of body-blocking.

Then the cub returned and they all settled down, although the yearling kept her back to the dog.

This is the same family group from a different camera position: clockwise from top left they are vixen, dog, cub and yearling.

This is the half-tail yearling with her three half siblings.

This is the dog with two cubs.

And on a different night with three cubs.

Here are the six in one shot.  The dog is bottom left, the two yearlings are bottom right with two cubs at the back and one on the driveway.  The vixen is the one not in the picture - she was here first that night and had already left.

In this one the three cubs are at the back.  You can see they don't keep still.

Here are all this year's and last year's cubs together.

And more of the three cubs.

This is the little one wanting to play.

The cubs have longer black socks than their parents.

In this photo from last night you can see one cub is certainly smaller than the other two.

And a brief video to show two of the cubs at play.

I'll keep trying for the seven fox shot but I am not optimistic.

The fork-tailed flower bee

At first glance this bee might be mistaken for a small brown bumblebee.  It is furry and rounded but is zippier and much noisier than a bumblebee, with a shrill buzz as it flies.  It is a fork-tailed flower bee (Anthophora furcata).  I am not sure where its common name comes from as it doesn't have a forked tail, as far as I can see, and the BWARS website and Steven Falk's Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland make no mention of a forked tail.

There are lots of these in my garden at the moment - more than I can remember - but perhaps I am just more aware of them.  The male has a yellow face and is slightly smaller.  The female has an orange tip to her tail and carries pollen in a scopa (pollen brush) on each hind leg.  Both fly rapidly and noisily, like their cousin the hairy-footed flower bee (Anthophora plumipes) which I wrote about a few weeks ago.

The female excavates a nest in dead wood, of which there is plenty around here.  They mostly prefer small, long tubular flowers but mine also seem very keen on foxgloves.  This is the male on viper's bugloss.

And this is the female.

Here is a female in a foxglove, showing her orange tail and white pollen in her scopae,

another with yellow pollen,

and another on Allium christophii, carrying green pollen.

Although they fly very fast they are slightly slower as they enter and reverse out of the flowers so I had fun trying to get flight shots.  These are females, covered in white pollen.

This one is wiping her eyes with her front legs as she reverses out of the flower.

And a male.

A. furcata has a long proboscis and often flies between flowers with it extended.  In the second photo the two halves of the proboscis are separated as the bee adjusts her tongue.

On Tuesday I went for a walk in Harwood Forest in Northumberland and heard a flower bee's buzz.  I eventually tracked it down and it stopped briefly for a photo.   Like many insects, this bee is probably more widespread than was previously realised, or may be expanding its range as the climate warms.  It is one of the target species of this year's North East Bee Hunt, run by the Natural History Society of Northumbria.  I have recorded my sightings with the survey.

You can find a BWARS information sheet on A. furcata here.  These bees are very welcome in the garden and are very efficient pollinators.  With luck they will be joined here by A. plumipes in the next few years.

Update 28 06 21.  I found this on Steven Falk's Flickr page.  It is odd that it isn't mentioned in the book, given the name.  And not much use in the field.

Young woodpeckers

I look forward to early and mid June every year because it is when the the fledgling great spotted woodpeckers arrive in the garden.  For a day or two they are unable to feed themselves so there is an opportunity to take more photos, although I don't know why as I already have plenty of good pictures of woodpeckers feeding their young.  It is a challenge as the youngsters are always moving about or sitting on the wrong side of a branch or tree, just out of view of the camera, and it is fairly dark under the trees.

In the days before fledging there is a constant stream of adult woodpeckers carrying off bits of peanuts and suet to the nests.  When the youngsters are first brought to the garden by their parents they sit high in the trees but they soon come down nearer the feeders.  To improve my chances I put up an old weathered fence post just beyond the peanut feeders in the hope that it would be a suitable perch.  One pair were very obliging and here are the results.

I saw the first youngster feeding independently over two weeks ago and another being fed yesterday morning so fledging from different nests is staggered over several days - I saw, or rather first heard, a nest still occupied in Harwood Forest this morning.  By next week I expect all the young birds will be feeding themselves and their parents can take a well-earned rest and get on with moulting.

Right on cue

The morning after I wrote my last post the dog fox turned up at 6am, obviously still hungry and hoping I had put out more food over night.

As he turned to leave, disappointed, another fox trotted across the lawn - the first cub of the year here.  I suppose it had been following its father around and it also came over to sniff for food.  The dog had gone so the cub sat on the lawn for a while before trotting away.  It is quite well grown but has to be able to jump over the rabbit fence to get in.

Last night I was ready, with two cameras set up.  As usual the dog turned up first, before dark.  I have wondered for a while if he was missing a left upper canine and this is confirmed.

Later the vixen was here and was joined by the half-tail cub from last year.

After they left there was a long pause so I was just thinking of going to bed when a cub turned up and started eating peanuts.

Another fox walked across in front of me and the cub snapped at it so it didn't stay.  I didn't see it clearly and thought at the time that it was the full-tailed cub from last year.  However, it has long black socks, which none of the adult foxes has so I now wonder if it was a cub, although it looks a bit bigger.  It isn't a fox I recognise.

Moments later another cub bounded in, paler in colour and with ears flattened in submission.  The first one turned its back (body blocking) but they soon settled down to share the peanuts.

Then something off to the right caught their attention and they ran into the copse on the left.  I don't know what it was as nothing else arrived.  It could have been another fox, or perhaps a late dog walker on the golf course.

Tonight I shall be ready, hoping to see at least three cubs together.