Reassuring to see large numbers of Honey Bees at work collecting pollen and nectar from the Anemones, Scilla and Puschkinias. Interesting that the Scilla (fewer stamens) have blue pollen (you can see it on the bee's back leg) while the Puschkinias have the more usual yellow pollen (images 5 and 6). Even one of the Ladybirds had found an aphid to eat.
In 'normal' years, I try to record all the wildlife that I can in our local wood, churchyard and garden during the year. However, with lockdown, this has become more obsessive! I am now starting on the very small creatures that are too small to identify with the naked eye and some are so minute as to require peering at through the microscope. Here we have 4 beetles and a member of the Collembola - a group of Arthropods separate from insects. The first image is using a closeup filter on my macro lens and is a Pollen beetle. The rest are my first attempts at recording with a USB microscope and I did not record the magnification but the beetles are around a 2 mm each.
Snowdrops are putting on a magnificent display everywhere around us including our village. Here are a few from our churchyard including a ladybird making the most of the warmer weather. Also saw our first Brimstone today though didn't manage a photo. Similar views are using different apertures to see what works best in terms of throwing the background out of focus but keeping the subject sharp.
