The season on my local Butterfly and Dragonfly survey doesn’t start till next week, but I thought, given Monday was a nice day, I would do the walk anyway and see what I could find.
Not surprisingly, given the still cool temperatures and the recent wet weather, no Butterflies put in an appearance but there were a lot of spring flowers visible.
There were some Bees, mostly Buff-tailed Bumblebee Queens still looking for nest sites, but I did find one Bee that I wasn’t sure of. On checking the photograph it turned out to be a Hairy-footed Flower Bee, my first record of this species on the patch. This early emerging solitary Bee is quite common in Southern England and can be found in parks, gardens and woodlands. Unlike Bumblebees, Solitary Bees do not nest in colonies. The females, once mated, lay their each egg in a nest cell, which they stock with pollen for the larvae to feed on. They then seal it up and the larvae develop inside before emerging the following spring.
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