Early morning bumblebee

Like most of us, bumblebees take time to get going in the morning.  I found this one early yesterday in bright sunshine but with an air temperature of only 2 or 3℃.  It is a mountain bumblebee queen (Bombus monticola), still not warm enough to fly comfortably.  Perhaps the most attractive bumblebee, it is also known as the bilberry bumblebee, appropriate here as it was sheltering at the base of bilberry plants.  It was shy about having its photo taken and flew of without striking a better pose than these.

A walk round the pond - Week 19

The weather has been cold and wet this week and only picked up in the last couple of days.  Because of that I didn't get to visit the pond until this morning.  When I arrived it was sunny but there was a heavy rain shower as I left. Perhaps not surprisingly I saw no damselflies or dragonflies.  There was plenty of birdsong, mostly from birds hidden from sight (including blackcap, chaffinch, yellowhammer, song thrush and blackbird) but I did catch sight of a singing sedge warbler

and a willow warbler.  The lens I carry, mainly for dragonflies, isn't ideal for small birds at a distance but at least you can see what they are.

The coot is still sitting on her eggs.

Although there were no damselflies to be seen, plenty of other insects were flying.  Butterflies included green veined white

and a female orange tip.

I also saw common carder bees and this early bumblebee (Bombus pratorum).

I have only rarely seen roe deer here although they are around.  In several places there is evidence of the bucks rubbing their antlers against the trees, to scrape off their velvet and leave a scent mark.  It doesn't do the trees much good.

The forecast for next week is better so I hope there will be more damsels and dragons.

OtterCam in black & white

A few more recent otter pictures, this time recorded after dark using infrared video cameras.  These days I usually record only video and take one or two frame grabs from the video.  The otters here are a bit too close the the camera and slightly out of focus so the frame grabs aren't very clear.  I have continued to experiment with back lighting and I think it is working well.  Normally the light fades off very quickly with distance so the background is very dark.  I use a small 12V infrared LED with a rechargeable battery and leave it switched on.  It then comes on when night falls and stays on until the battery runs down.

I now have two battery LEDs so I can record on consecutive nights but I haven't yet tried them both together.  The videos work well, although they are less clear than in the daytime, but I think I need to get the cameras slightly farther back from the otters.

More red mason bees

The first red mason bees emerged very early this year, probably encouraged by the warm weather at Easter.  Since then it has been cold and most of the bees in the bee house and in the south wall of the house have yet to emerge. Most of those I see are in and around three dead sycamores near the front door.   I drilled a lot of holes in the trees last year, most of which face south and west.  The male red mason bees sleep in the holes overnight and peer out of them in the morning, waiting for things to warm up.  They have powerful mandibles, used for chewing their way out of their cocoons and mud-walled cells.

Here are a few more portraits.

This one is a female.  She has a black face with two horns used for building the mud walls in the nest hole - hence her name Osmia bicornis.  She also has pollen on her face.

Sometimes the bees come out and crawl round to the sunny side of the trunk to help them warm up.

A walk round the pond - Week 18

Here we go!  Right on schedule, the first damselflies of the year.  I saw several large red damselflies (Pyrrhosoma nymphula) of both sexes when I visited earlier this week.  This is predictably the first species of the season and reports of emergence have been spreading up the country over the past couple of weeks, consistent with spring travelling north at 1.8 miles per hour.  These are immature females with pale colours and yellow shoulder stripes.

And these are immature males, also with yellow shoulder stripes which will turn red with maturity.

This week's butterflies included orange-tips.  They have been present for the past few weeks but this is the first time I have managed a photo as they rarely stop for a rest.  These are males

and females, all feeding on lady's smock.

The coot is still sitting on her eggs and the goslings still number eight.

With luck and good weather we may see the first dragonfly next week.

Camouflage

Fortunately I haven't really got into moths but I do enjoying seeing day-flying moths when I come across them.  This one doesn't fly in the day (unless disturbed) but often sits around in the open.  It is called Angle Shades (Phlogophora meticulosa).  It has very pretty colouration which is spectacularly effective camouflage.

It has positioned itself across the gap between two stones so its markings line up almost perfectly with the background. It is a wonder I even saw it.

OtterCam in colour

I have been continuing with my plan to put out the trail cameras for otters once a month.  The otters haven't been seen in the daytime but they continue to show up on every camera each night I try.  These pictures were from last weekend. Most of my trail camera photos are black and white, having been recorded in infrared cameras, but this time I used the old Wingscapes Birdcam 2.0.

This photo is interesting.  The low-glow infrared video camera was positioned to the side and the colour camera can detect the red light, something I haven't seen before.  I don't know if the otter can see the red but if it can it isn't bothered by it.

Of course I select the best photos for posting but I do get a lot like this,

and like this.

Otters are mostly nocturnal but on one night the otter turned up before dark so the Browning was able to record a video in colour as well.

There also lots of infrared videos so I may post some of those as well when I have had time to process them.