Ivy flowers

Ivy is one of the last plants to flower and provides a welcome resource for late season insects. The ivy in my garden is now providing nectar and pollen to a wide variety of insects.  I first noticed a lot of pollen being brought into the hives and when I went into the copse I found honey bees,

wasps,

hoverflies,

flies,

crane flies,

and ladybirds, mostly harlequins,

and one cream-spot ladybird.  Until now I didn't know that ladybirds would eat pollen.

Ivy nectar is rich in sugar, 49% w/w, and the pollen has a high level of amino acids.  The ivy will probably provide nectar and pollen until at least the end of this month.  Later the berries will be eaten by thrushes, blackcaps, wood pigeons and other birds.

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.

Beeodiversity on viper's bugloss

If I were to choose one plant to attract bumblebees into the garden it would be viper's bugloss (Echium vulgare).  It is a native wild flower in the borage family and happily grows in gardens.  It is biennial and seeds itself around in the right conditions - in my garden the flower spikes are over 1m tall.  Unlike many flowers, Echium vulgare produces nectar throughout the day and the nectar is protected in hot or rainy weather, producing a very reliable nectar source over many weeks.

In the past three weeks I have seen 12 species of bee on the viper's bugloss, including all seven common bumblebee species.

One of my favourites and the easiest to recognise is the red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius).  It's colours go well with the blue flowers.

The male red-tailed bumblebee has a yellow collar and a yellow moustache.

This is another easily-identified bee, a common carder bee (Bombus pascuorum).

Nearly all the bumblebees I saw were only interested in nectar but several early bumblebees (Bombus pratorum) were collecting pollen, as you can see from the blue pollen in the pollen basket on this bee's hind leg.

Although she did take a few sips of nectar as well.

The garden bumblebee (Bombus hortorum) has a very long tongue.  This one is a worker.

This is a queen buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris).  Her short tongue is less than half the length of the tongue in a garden bumblebee.

This is a white-tailed bumblebee queen (Bombus lucorum), another short-tongued species.

The male white-tailed bumblebee has a broad yellow collar and a yellow moustache.

Buff-tailed and white-tailed workers are difficult to distinguish in the field.  This one (whichever it is) has been collecting pollen from a different flower but has stopped by for some nectar.

Bumblebees are often difficult to photograph but some are easily recognised even with their heads deep in the flowers. This is a tree bumblebee (Bombus hypnorum).

Tree bumblebees usually have an orange/brown thorax, black middle and white tail, as above, but in some the thorax is very dark.

And a bumblebee with a difference.  This is a gypsy cuckoo bumblebee (Bombus bohemicus).  It has dark wings and no pollen basket on its hind leg.  This bee moves more slowly around the flowers and drinks for longer at each one.  It has a short tongue and I see it more often on flat open flowers.

Solitary bees like viper's bugloss as well.  Here is a rather faded female red mason bee (Osmia bicornis).

And this is a very old male red mason bee.  He has lost most of his fur and all of his red colour.  I think he tried cutting his own hair during the lockdown.

A female patchwork leafcutter bee (Megachile centuncularis) visited the flowers as well.

A real treat was a visit from a male fork-tailed flower bee (Anthophora furcata).  I didn't see a female this year.

And last but not least, a honey bee (Apis mellifera).  It is interesting that honey bees are more interested in collecting pollen than nectar and spend their time on the anthers and not in the flowers.

I have also noticed a lot of blue pollen in the hives.  (If you look carefully at the cells towards the top left corner each contains a tiny honey bee egg.  The shiny cells on the right contain nectar.)

The bees tend to store pollen from different flowers separately in different cells, although it doesn't always work out that way.  In this photo you can see individual blue pollen pellets (towards bottom left and top right) which haven't yet been pressed into the rest of the pollen.

Viper's bugloss is attractive to other insects such as butterflies, which drink the nectar

and hoverflies which eat the pollen.

Viper's bugloss gets its strange name from the 16th century Doctrine of Signatures which held that herbs resembling human body parts, animals or other objects could be used to guide treatment of various ailments.  Viper's bugloss was thought to look like a snake (although I can't see the resemblance) and was recommended for treatment of adder bites. The bugloss part of its name means ox tongue and refers to the appearance of the leaves.  Echium comes from the Greek word for viper and vulgare means common.