A butterfly first

The butterflies and bees really seem to be doing well in our garden this year. I have seen plenty of them, and a couple of new varieties recently. Last week, I luckily spotted a small butterfly in the garden from the house. I went outside to find that it was a Common Blue, one that we haven't seen in our garden before...

Also seen around was the Gatekeeper butterfly, which we see most years (pictured below). Unfortunately, I didn't take a photo of it with its wings open.

Also seen were Large White and Red Admiral. Large White butterflies appear to be everywhere at the moment. Both butterflies pictured above particularly liked the Marjoram flowers. However, other flowers seem to be appearing everywhere (most of which were not planted by us). I took photos of some of them and they are below. The first photo shows a thistle flower which seems to be particularly popular with the bees.

I'm not sure what the flower in the photo below is but it really looked brilliant in the afternoon sun. In the background, you can see the red-orange flowers of the bean plants.

The Veronica plant seems to be very healthy at the moment. And finally, a quick note on the birds. The feeders have been very busy recently, especially with the tits and sparrows. Today, I saw 10 sparrows feeding on the lawn, which is the most we have ever seen in our garden. Also, Blue, Great, Long-tailed and Coal Tits have been seen frantically feeding. Maybe they are stocking up ready for when they moult? I will leave you with a photo of a pair of Blue Tits which were acrobatically feeding at the end of the garden.

Sunny or not, have a great week :)

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.

Bees and buzzy friends

On our most recent trip to my Grandpa's house, I was able to have a look around his garden and photograph anything that interested me. It was quite a sunny day, so the garden bees were out. His garden is pretty much full of various sorts of flowers, so it was no surprise to see plenty of bees around.

Below is a picture of an arch in his garden, surrounded by climbers with flowers.

I always find it quite tricky to get photographs of bees, mostly because they almost never stay still for more than about 3 seconds. If you are lucky enough for one to land on a flower for more than 3 seconds, I find that either a) my camera refuses to focus on the bee or b) the bee is so far inside the flower that it can barely be seen in the picture. So I had a go at taking a picture of one while it was flying. My camera still focused on the flower instead of the bee :(
I'm not quite sure of the ID of the bee in the photo below.


Never mind, I suppose taking pictures of bees could be something I could work on in the summer. Anyway, moving on, also in his garden was a wasps nest, but rather where you wouldn't expect it. They had made a nest in his nestbox. It was quite a strange sight, I must admit. As you will see in the picture below, the nest bulges out of the entrance hole of the box.

Hopefully, I will post again tomorrow, providing the weather is good enough for me to go out and take any photos. Maybe even some more bee photos, who knows?!