Unsprung photo - mason bee

Last night was rather exciting for me as BBC Springwatch Unsprung shared my mite infested mason bee as the bug of the day photo,
here is the screenshot of my bee's big moment!
Nature isn't always pretty
If you want to hear what Nick baker had to say about it you can find it on bbc i-player for three weeks

I photographed this bee on Monday morning slowly crawling over our outside table it could hardly move as it was so weighed down by the phoretic mites, I made up a sugar and water solution and put some drops of it on the table for it to feed from, which it did, then I popped indoors for something and when I returned it had gone
But I did manage to take these pictures before it went

thunderstorm approaching

parading mallards

Attention!

Quick March!

About turn!

Quick March!

At Ease!

Fall Out!

I've always said I wanted ducks in our garden, I never expected them to come in the form of two male mallards though!  - another first for our garden -stayed for around an hour on Saturday evening they would have stayed longer if our dog hadn't realised they were there!

Brimstone

This beautiful brimstone visited our garden today, I had to break off conversation with daughter to rush inside to find my camera, shouting 'stay' 'stay' 'stay' as if it understands dog commands!!!
Any way it stayed and floated from one flower to the next for two or three minutes, long enough for me to get some photos -we haven't had one in our garden since August 2010 so you can imagine my excitement!!!!

Lime Hawk-moth

We have put our trap out a few times this year with mixed results, last night came up trumps though - with this beauty resting on top. Our first ever Lime Hawk-moth

Wood Mouse

We had a visitor to our back yard earlier on this evening, cleaning up some of the dropped sunflowers, this cute Wood Mouse. I photographed it through our dining room window, but it spied me and froze just staring - eyes bulging, not even twitching, so I quickly took this photo and moved away from the window as I didn't want anything swooping down and taking it or worse still for one of our neighbours cats to get it, I went into kitchen and watched from there he was still staring at the dining room window, but then darted back under one of our old sinks - safe!

fledgling goldfinches

Around 7.30pm tonight there was a loud tweeting commotion going on at our back yard  feeders - four fledgling goldfinches arrived to get their supper with their doting parents before flying off somewhere safe for the night, I will await their return tomorrow and hope that all four will be enjoying breakfast here too!

I am also hoping for better light tomorrow and an early visit from our window cleaner would be useful too he's only been once this year!

More pressed flowers and leaves

As spring moves up a notch, more flowers are now available from my garden, some would be considered as weeds and some are in our hedges, others are in my flower beds.

what can you identify?

The emergence of the hoverflies

You have to love spring - everything starts to wake up again, the plants are starting to grow, hedges are starting to leaf, blackthorn is in full flower and insects and other invertebrates are emerging! hundreds of them this week in my garden! I had to get ID confirmation, but now I know these are a species of Eristalis hoverflies also called drone flies as they look very similar to a honey bee drone.

eristalis sp. hoverflies

eristalis sp. hoverflies

eristalis sp. hoverflies

eristalis sp. hoverflies

The Eristalis have a wing vein with a very distinctive loop which you can see in this photo

eristalis sp. hoverfly

My garden also has many spiders you can see them all dart for cover when you get too close, but these Nursery web spiders don't seem so keen to hide so I managed to photograph several of them!

Nursery Web Spider

Nursery Web Spider

Nursery Web Spider

Nursery Web Spider

and when I was photographing the spiders I also spotted this pretty little woundwort shieldbug

woundwort shieldbug

photography by Angela Smith

Blackcap

another sign that Spring has arrived!
this morning we had our first sighting of a blackcap this year and one of the best views we have ever had of one here, this male stayed a long time, attracted to the remaining berries on our cotoneaster - hopefully he will keep returning now for more!
these photos were taken through our double glazed windows so apologies for the quality!