Life on Comfrey and Alkanet

The Alkanet and White Comfrey are in full bloom in the garden and provide home and food to a very large variety of species. Here are a few. The Rhingia rostrata has very impressive mouthparts for slurping up nectar!

Bugs, Bees, Beetle and Butterfly

As the cooler moist air arrived yesterday afternoon, a lot of insects became active especially various leaf bugs - some new to my list for the garden!!. Still lots of Bees and Wasp species plus a very small beetle, first Comma butterfly and a large number of Hoverflies!

Toft Bees Waking Up

Quite a variety of species of bees were on the wing today in the garden and churchyard. This very smart Orange-tailed Mining Bee was sunning itself in the garden. The most numerous were the Ashy Mining Bee males all flying around and fighting waiting for the slightly later emergence of the female.

More Garden Arrivals

The midday sunshine brought out a few more flies, bees etc in the garden.

Inverts Emerge from Winter Hibernation

As the temperature climbed to 19 degrees insects and spiders emerged from the vegetation. Gwynne's Bee is always one of the first to be recorded and please to see a Zebra Jumping spider holding the usual territory on the summerhouse wall

 

Striped Insects on the Ivy

 The Hoverflies, Other flies, Wasps and even Moths were enjoying the nectar on the Ivy flowers today, and several spiders have already reduced the hundreds of Ivy bees that are out foraging in the garden amd village