Pollination

A mining bee, Andrena sp. on ox-eye daisy

The ox-eye daisies in the garden are attracting quite a few of these pretty little bees. They are solitary, not living in colonies like bumblebees and honeybees. This one will be a female, gathering a heavy load of pollen on its hairy legs, which it will take back to its burrow as a protein rich feed for the developing young. I'm not sure whether they are nesting anywhere in the garden or where they may be travelling from, they prefer more sandy substrates than our garden offers.

I am on annual leave for the next couple of weeks. Today, I caught up with a lot of things that should have been done a long time ago. At last I have backed all of my photos onto a second external hard drive, I may be able to sleep a bit more easily now knowing that I have two copies of everything.

In the afternoon I went to Leighton Moss hoping to see an osprey, a few have been around in recent days. I wasn't in luck. I spent a happy half hour trying to get a photo of a coot diving for weed. In the end I realised why I couldn't capture one in mid-leap, they put their heads in the water first, then flip up vertically and go down. The result is that I have a lot of photographs of headless coots with their rumps in the air.

Dad rang just as I was loading tonight's blip. He wanted to express his gratitude for all of the well wishes and compliments that have been made on the photograph of him that I blipped on Saturday. He is a Blip guest of mine, but somehow wasn't able to submit a comment of his own tonight.

I don't wish to prevail on Mollyblobs too much, but she is Blipfoto's resident insect guru, and she will almost certainly be able to identify this to species. I will have another go later myself at tracking it down, but wanted to get this on before it gets too late in the evening.