Bees and lookalikes

 At the moment, the garden is buzzing with bees. Especially bumblebees. These can be identified from the stripes on their body and the colour of the end of their abdomen. There is a good guide to the common species here

 

Of course, it is not that easy when they are flying around but I often find dead ones either in the sun room or just on the ground which makes it a bit easier to look closely. It is also confused by there being different sizes, with the Queen who is larger being seen first and then smaller male bees of similar patterns. Here are some of the ones I have found in the last week.

2 cuckoo bees and a white-tailed bumble bee

Important note: On submitting this photo to an insect expert, I find I am not very good at identifying bees! So take any species names as guesses...

On the right of the photo is a white-tailed bumblebee which is pretty common in my garden. The two bees to the left are cuckoo bees. They do not bother to make their own nest but lay their eggs in the nest of another bumblebee which then raises the cuckoo grubs as if they were its own. Each type usually resembles the bumblebee that it takes advantage of and looks pretty similar to it. They never have pollen baskets on their legs because they have no young to feed, and they are usually not as hairy as normal bumblebees.

A Drone-fly

The next insect in the photo above looks as though it could be a bee but in fact it is a hoverfly.

I have no idea what the advantage is for this fly to look like a honeybee.

Apologies for the poor photograph, as this seemed to be the only one I have of the orange tip butterfly. This one was taken at Nethy Bridge this weekend. I have seen lots of orange tip butterflies in my garden, and if you can see the orange tips they are male. The females lay their eggs on Honesty, of which I have lots in my garden, and I was about to pull the plants up before they self seed but now I will leave them and see if any little orange caterpillars appear. 

Single or Double

 All of a sudden, the garden has burst into bloom with the recent warm weather. It has been somewhat frustrating that I am unable to do much gardening as I have a broken arm, but in compensation there is no need to feel guilty for sitting on the bench watching the pond in the sunshine.

Single Marsh Marigold

At the moment the marsh marigolds are blooming. There are two varieties in the pond, one is the wild single flowered sort, and the other has "double" flowers though in fact each flower has many rows of petals. This will be a cultivated variety rather than a natural one. In fact, I prefer the single flowers, both for appearance and the fact that they are far more accessible to insect life. All those extra petals look pretty but they make it difficult, or even impossible, for the insects to get at the pollen or nectar.

Double flowered Marsh Marigold

One of the other flowers around the pond, spring sweet pea, (Lathyrus verna) had an interesting visitor. It was a bee I had not seen before but was very distinctive being covered in orange hairs. It was a Tawny Mining Bee. No it's not! see below:

Update:  An insect expert tells me it is  Bombus pascuorum, the Common Carder Bee.

 (Tawny Mining Bee: These are solitary bees which make a nest in soil and feed their young on pollen. Apparently their nests look like little volcanoes of soil with a hole in the top but I have not yet managed to see where it is nesting.)

The Bogbean flowers in the pond have just started to open, and if you look carefully a fly has already decided to visit.

If you are choosing flowers for your garden, consider buying the single flowered varieties and you will be doing the local insects a favour. And they will return the favour by visiting your garden. 

Arran and Arms

Partway through April, my husband and I joined a group from the British lichen society on Arran for a few days of lichen hunting. Although my husband is quite happy for me to go lichen hunting, he spent his time cycling. The weather was rather unpredictable resulting in our ferry from Ardrossan being cancelled with an hour’s notice and deferred for two days to 7 o’clock in the morning. After the initial panic, we managed to drive to Troon and get an alternative ferry, with a sigh of relief. We were very fortunate has the ferry after that was cancelled as well, and some people had to wait until the following day to get over.

 

As most of you will know, Arran is an island on the West Coast of Scotland. Although small, it has a range of interesting habitats from a mountain, Goat Fell, to plenty of coastline and Glens. Each habitat has a different selection of lichens, and I particularly enjoyed the coastal visit to Kildonan which included dinosaur footprints in the rock. 

I am not familiar with coastal lichens as Newtonmore is a long way from the sea but there was a big expanse of Dermatocarpon miniatum on the boulders where water ran down. I don't know why it is called miniatum as the lobes weren't mini at all, being over an inch across. There was another species of Dermatocarpon in my last post which again was in a place where water ran down the rocks.

 

Another visit was to an old graveyard. Graveyards are very popular with lichenologists because the gravestones are made of different rocks and lichens have their own preferences for the acidity or alkalinity of the rock they grow on. This means that you get a good range of species in a small area.

Noses to the gravestone!

 On returning to Newtonmore, I went for a walk along the Spey to advise on where they might put wildflower information boards. It is bit early for flowers on the Wildcat trail down by the Spey but there were some interesting fungi.

A morel

One was a morel with a contorted top and the other was a  puzzle until I got home and could look it up.

Moon Poop

 Apologies for the awful picture but there were two large hand size white blobs on an old Alder tree. On touching one, it had a skin but was squishy inside. A bit like custard that had set in the jug.  Research revealed that it was not a fungus but a slime mould, Reticularia lycoperdon or False Puffball or even better, Moon Poop! I had plans to go back and take pictures when it had developed more and produced spores but as you will find out in a moment this was not to be.

 The next day I went to a meeting in Strathpeffer of the HBRG, the Highland biological recording group and heard some interesting talks about beetles. There was a speaker called Ashleigh Whiffin who is a curator of the insect collection at the National Museums of Scotland. Ash loves her carrion beetles and gave a really interesting talk. She has a YouTube video available here. Carrion beetles bury little corpses and use them to feed their young.  After the meeting I went to do some shopping in Inverness and had a bit of a disaster when I tripped on an uneven paver in the car park and broke my arm. I am attempting to dictate this blog post but hope I will be able to type again in a few weeks.