Grey Patched Mining Bee

Tiny Tuesday: Grey Patched Mining Bee

I spotted this little bee (smaller than a honeybee) in the garden this afternoon and was immediately attracted to his wonderful head of hair.  A blond punk haircut if ever there was one.  Billy Idol back in his Generation X days perhaps.

Having managed to get a shot of him, I then started to really struggle to identify him.  I was reasonably confident that he was one of the ground dwelling mining bees - one of the Adrena. But male Adrena are notoriously difficult to identify and in the end I asked the very helpful people on the UK Bees, Wasps and Ants forum for assistance.  Blip's very own JDO volunteered that it might be Adrena nitida and indeed, that seems to be the consensus.  I still haven't managed to get a shot of the female of that species, although I think that I might have seen her earlier on.

I hope you've had fun trying to find something small to photograph today.  I will be catching up on your Tiny Tuesday blips during the course of the next few days and will update this page with the results once I have done so.


TINY TUESDAY RESULTS:


There were 82 entries to review as part of this week’s Tiny Tuesday Challenge.  There were 79 when I started this review earlier today, and somehow an extra 3 managed to sneak in when I wasn’t looking, before I had finished.   ;-) 

If you haven’t already done so, they are all worth looking through, there are some excellent shots there, over and above the 5 that I have chosen to give hearts to this week.  Entries ranged from the smallest post office in the world to tiny flying insects.

As ever the decisions were difficult but without further ado, here are my favourites for this week (in no particular order):

Dandies are back by Suejay50 - a lovely macro shot of dandelion seeds in close up.

Dwarf green tree frog by AnnieBelle - a lovely shot of a 3cm long tree frog.

Busy as a ... by DawnP - Hairy-footed Flower Bees are a lovely sign of Spring and this is a lovely macro shot of one.

Slurp, slurp, slurp ... by Kate64 - another bee shot, but this time its a honey bee enjoying the berberis.

First Ducklings by AH14 - another sign of Spring, but in this case a duckling complete with reflection.

I hope that you have enjoyed Tiny Tuesday this week, and I look forward to seeing your entries for next week - Tuesday 19th April, when the tag will be #TT360.