A new bee

New for me at least, but also fairly new to the UK and relatively new to science.  This is the ivy bee, Colletes hederae.  I went to look for it in the village of Nether Heyford in Northamptonshire and found dozens on flowering ivy, in the hedge next to what used to be my dad's allotment.  Females are about the size of a honey bee with very prominent cream/yellow and black stripes.

These have yellow pollen in their scopae (pollen brushes on their back legs).

Males are smaller and thinner, as with most solitary bees.

Pleased with seeing these for the first time, I was even more pleased to find them in my mother's garden when I returned home.

The ivy bee is a solitary mining bee.  Each female digs a nest in sandy soil and provisions it with pollen to feed the developing larvae.  The nests are separate but are often in close proximity in an aggregation which may number thousands of nests.  Amazingly the ivy bee was first described in 1993 in southern Europe, having previously been misidentified as Colletes halophilus, the morphologically identical but ecologically distinct sea aster mining bee.  The first UK specimen was recorded in Dorset in 2001 and it has since spread over much of the southern half of England and Wales.  There are a few recent records from farther north, including just south of the Tyne in County Durham, so with luck ivy bees will reach Newcastle soon.

A glimpse of another world

I took a trip last week to see bottlenose dolphins, just off the coast not far from here.  The Pelagic Tour, organised by Northern Experience Wildlife Tours, left the Royal Quays Marina at North Shields on the JFK Two and headed down the river to the mouth of the Tyne.  We turned south and very soon met a school of dolphins in the bay just beyond the South Pier.  They were busy feeding and didn't come close but the skipper turned off the engine and as we floated on the flat sea we could hear the dolphins breathing as they broke the surface.

I was disappointed by my photos.  My lens (100-280mm) was too short for the more distant views and later was too long for the close views.  It was also very difficult to predict where the next dolphin would surface.  Other people on the boat with more experience, more appropriate equipment, a better position on the boat and better reflexes (!) fared much better.

Experts can identify individuals from the appearance of their dorsal fin and many of the local dolphins are well known.

We headed north, past Tynemouth and met the same school of dolphins off Cullercoats and Whitley Bay.  There were dozen or more and this time they came very close to the boat.  After more frustration with trying to take photos I switched to video on the phone and fared much better.  I think the best photos were frame grabs from the video.

      

We then motored father north, as far as Blyth and Cambois (pronounced Cammus if you are not from round here) and moved inshore to meet the dolphins once again.  On the photos you can see the bubbles as they breathe out just before breaking the surface and snatching a breath in before submerging again.

I made a short compilation of the best bits of video.

This was a wonderful afternoon and a great privilege to get close to these amazing animals living in a totally different world not so far away.

Calibrating VoleCam

OtterCam often detects "non-target" species, ie things that aren't otters, most commonly a juvenile water rail.  This time it detected a vole.  When I reviewed the video on the camera's small replay screen I thought it was a brown rat but it was clear on the computer that it was a vole.  The question is, which vole?  Our three native voles (bank vole, field vole and water vole) are distinguished by size, fur colour and relative length of tail.  On a black & white infrared video it is down to body size and length of tail but the problem is that there is no calibration.  Here is a still from the video.

I found picture of a water shrew on an earlier recording that was more or less the same distance from the camera.

An adult water shrew is 6.3-9.6cm in length and the vole looks to be about twice as long as the shrew.  A bank vole is 8-12cm, a field vole 9-11cm and a water vole 14-22cm.  So if this was an adult water shrew the vole has to be a water vole.  But the still image also shows that the vole's tail is relatively short, perhaps one third of its body length.  Quoted relative tail lengths are about one third for a field vole, one half for a water vole and two thirds for a bank vole.

So I tried a different calibration.  I know the diameter of the culvert is 75cm and using the diameter at the vole's position in the video gives a vole body length of 10-11cm.  Coupled with the short tail I came to the conclusion that this must be a field vole and not a water vole.  (I now presume the water shrew is a juvenile.)

Disappointing, as I would have liked to find a water vole but common things are common and field voles are certainly common - there are about 75,000,000 field voles in this country at the end of the breeding season, about one hundred times the number of water voles.

So my quest for a good trail camera picture of a water vole goes on.  In the meantime here are the video images from the two cameras.

An exciting local sighting

I went for a walk around Gosforth Nature Reserve yesterday afternoon with friends Kate & David who were passing through Newcastle on their way north.  Half way round the reserve we saw a large dragonfly with brown wings which could only be a brown hawker, but we were looking into the sun and I didn't have a camera so it was difficult to be sure. As the weather was good I went back this morning and in over two hours and over 300 photos I had just these four worth keeping.

These photos were hard won as I was shooting into the sun and the dragonfly was always on the move.  They do confirm it is a male brown hawker (Aeshna grandis), a rare record for the North East and a first for the reserve.  Unlike other hawkers it never hovered and on the few times it rested it was always out of view in the reeds.  So the only photos I could get were flight shots.  (I use manual mode, 1/1000s at f/6.3 with auto ISO and manual focus.)

Brown hawkers are found through most of central, southern and eastern England but they are rare in the south west and the north and in Wales.

Although there are brown hawker records from Northumberland they are very few and the only validated record I can find for the last 20 years is mine from Wallington two years ago.  By coincidence the British Dragonfly Society's report on the State of Dragonflies in Britain and Ireland 2021 was published this week.  The good news is that more species are doing well than are declining.  Reasons for increasing occupancy and species richness include increased recording intensity (ie more people submitting more records), restoration and creation of habitat, and rising temperatures from climate change.  This is the report's page on brown hawker.

Out and about in August

This is a rather belated look back at a few things I saw in August.  It was a good month for seeing dragonflies, especially hawkers in nearby Gosforth Nature Reserve.  It was no surprise to see southern hawkers or migrant hawkers but there have been far more sightings of common hawkers than in previous years.  Common hawkers aren't usually easy to photograph as the males never seem to stop flying but I did see this one pause to catch his breath.

There have been many sightings of ovipositing females, good evidence that there is now a breeding population.

These are female and male southern hawkers.

And these are male and female migrant hawkers.

I even took a phone photo of a female migrant hawker.

At the end of the month I led a late season dragonfly walk in the reserve.  We saw eight species of odonata, including one I had just explained we wouldn't see, a male black darter.  This is a rare sighting for the reserve so I was pleased to get a record shot on my little travel soon, the only camera I was carrying.

There were lots of butterflies on the wing in August.  Here are just three, painted lady, small copper and peacock.

My Agapanthus Royal Blue has been putting on a spectacular show and has been a magnet for bees and hoverflies.

There wasn't much rain in the month but during one rain shower I saw two wood pigeons bathing in a puddle, behaviour I haven't seen before.  For more than five minutes they were both holding their wings up to get them washed underneath by the rain.

Also in the garden a rare sighting of two Gallus gallus domesticus, relatives of the South-east Asian red jungle fowl.

Otherwise foxes, a weasel, moths and the sparrowhawk have been keeping me occupied - all reported previously. August weather was pretty unremarkable compared with reports from other parts of the country and the world.  Here it was drier than usual with average temperature and rainfall.