A garden stroll

Again, it has been a while since my last posting, but hopefully I can get back to posting more regularly soon. After my very average attempt to take photos of bees in my last posting, I thought I would walk round the garden and try to take some decent photos. The first thing I will say is that I was definitely not short of bees to photograph. There really are a lot out at the moment.

In the front garden, I spotted a bumblebee that I think was a White-tailed Bumblebee, although it could have been a Buff-tailed Bumblebee. It was quite large, so I think it may have been a queen. I decided to take a video of the bee, instead of a photo. The video, which is below, shows the bee crawling around on some Marjoram. The bees really seem to love that plant, and luckily, it seems to come up every year.

I also had a few attempts at photographing the various bees, but still found it difficult. A couple of the photos are below. It was great to see so many in the garden. The Marjoram has now finished flowering, although the bees are still around.

If the bee below had been looking the right way, it might have been a better photo!

Whilst I was outside, I also noticed that some apricots had appeared on our apricot tree. It looks like a there may be a few more than last year. We really don't usually get many apricots from the tree each year (15 maximum), so it was good to see a few already!

Moving onto other buzzy insects... the local wasps have unfortunately been enjoying our new bird food on the bird table, which contains dried fruit, as you will see from the photo below. You may just about be able to spot the wasp tucking in. ;) There seems to be a good number of them around at the moment, probably because of the decent weather we have had recently.


I have some more insects to post tomorrow, which were, thankfully, easier to photograph than the bees.

Butterflies and Bees

Sorry that I haven't posted anything much recently. I have been (a) very busy, and (b) not here, as you are about to find out. We, as a family went to a music festival last Thursday until yesterday called WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance). I had a great time and I recommend it to all. We camped in a quiet part of the campsite with wild flowers. There were plenty of bees there and, after much trouble, I managed to take a picture of one. It was still disappointingly rubbish though, so it is not included below. Also, at home there are bees and butterflies. I was more successful in capturing these on my camera.

The bees in our garden are honey bees and are attracted by the marjoram which has purple flowers. The ones I saw at the music festival in Wiltshire were a mix of Honey Bees and various Bumble Bees. The butterflies I have seen are Ringlets, Peacocks and Gatekeepers. Next door, there is a Buddleia bush, which they may be attracted by.

A Honey Bee:

Another Honey Bee (or is it they same one?!)

Peacock Butterfly (It flew into our garden shed and landed on a paint pot breifly):

A Ringlet Butterfly: