Merry Christmas

A bird in the hand

I was out and about with Phil & Denise when we met a flock of hungry (and fearless) coal tits.

What's that bee?

I have become increasingly fascinated by wild bees - solitary bees and bumblebees - over the past couple of years. There are 275 species in the British Isles and identifying them is a real challenge for the beginner.  Until now there has been no useful guide book so I have been using the BWARS (Bee, Wasp and Ant Recording Society) website and Steven Falk's Flickr site.  Now a Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland has just been published so I immediately bought myself a copy as a Christmas present (and opened it early!).

With 432 pages and nearly 2000 illustrations and photos the book is very comprehensive.  The text and photos are by Steven Falk and it is wonderfully illustrated by Richard Lewington.  The author makes the point that precise identification of bees is not always possible from photos but I have taken quite a lot(!) of bee photos this past year so this new field guide has enabled me to look back at some of them and work out what they are.

This one, I think, is a female Flavous Nomad Bee (Nomada flava).

And this is a female Fork-jawed Nomad Bee (Nomada ruficornis).

I saw a couple of all black bumblebees.  This one is probably a black form of the male Field Cuckoo Bee (Bombus campestris).

And this is obviously a female (pollen in the pollen baskets) and could be a perniger form worker Large Garden Bumblebee (Bombus ruderatus).

This bee I saw in Northumberland in April and is probably a queen Forest Cuckoo Bee (Bombus sylvestris).

This is a Green-eyed Flower Bee (Anthophora bimaculata).

These are a few of the many that I still haven't worked out.  If you know what they are please leave a comment.

Bird of the week - Mistle thrush

An appropriate choice for Christmas time, the mistle thrush is Turdus viscivorus, or mistletoe-eating thrush.  So if you couldn't find any mistletoe you know who to blame.  Mistle thrushes are very obvious at this time of year as they plunder berry-bearing trees and shrubs.  One bird is noisily trying to defend the berries on the holly tree outside my front door.

This one was in a mixed gang of blackbirds, redwings and a solitary waxwing.

Mistle thrushes numbers are falling, along with those of other thrushes, and they have just been moved from the amber to the red list in the UK.

They are also in decline as garden birds.  These are BTO Garden BirdWatch data from the UK

and from the North East.  So I'm lucky to have one.

However, they are still found in many of the lowland areas of the British Isles.

Listen to Sir David Attenborough's BBC Radio 4 Tweet of the Day on mistle thrush here.  Read more about mistle thrushes here.  Watch a BTO video on mistle thrush here,

Short-eared robin

Putting on a show

This guy was showing who's boss, patrolling his territory in the reserve.  He was probably admiring his reflection as well.

Red and white

The first snow of the winter.  The squirrels looked as though their paws were cold.  Mine were.