Siesta

I spent a while in the garden this afternoon, firstly planting up patio pots, and then wandering around with the camera in search of invertebrates. Initially I didn't have much luck with the insects because it was dark and rather stormy, but after a while the cloud thinned and it warmed up, and then a few things came out to play. Most of them were species I'd already photographed this season, but among the hoverflies I was able to add Epistrophe eligans to my year list, and might have got a Syrphus as well if I hadn't moved too fast and startled it into flight.

Out of several candidates, I've selected this Common Mourning Bee for tonight's post, partly because of the amount of time I wasted spent trying to get some decent photos of him, but more importantly because I find it hard to resist a sleeping bee. I was marching back to the house after declaring my mini-beast photo shoot finished when I spotted him on a leaf of the Viburnum juddii, squeaked with excitement, skidded to a halt, and immediately turned the camera back on. Unfortunately he was a little high up the shrub for close-up portraits, so I had to fetch a hop-up step and climb up to him, and the ground is so wet that the step kept sinking into the flower bed under my not-inconsiderable weight. The shrub was also blowing back and forth in the gusty wind while I sank gently in the west alongside it, and I'm putting it mildly if I say that the combined movement of leaf and step were... unhelpful. I took 161 photos over the next ten minutes and I've kept seven of them, a cull rate that's something of a record even by my fairly profligate standards.

If you compare this bee with the virtually black individual I posted as my second image last week, you'll see that he's far closer to the 'breed standard' for this species, with a broad grey collar, mixed black and white facial hair, and white spots on his middle and back legs and the sides of his abdomen. The specimen I posted on Facebook last weekend was an intermediate form, with the grey collar and a hint of white on the abdomen, but none on the face or legs. Three quite distinctive individuals turning up in my garden in the space of eight days illustrates fairly well how variable a species this is. It's also worth noting that all three are males - I haven't found a female Melecta albifrons yet this season - and that while most male solitary bees spend their time frantically hunting for females, and only seem to pause when they need to warm themselves or feed, all three of my Common Mourning Bees were sleeping. This one managed to stay sound asleep throughout my photo shoot, despite all the clambering about and sliding around I was doing, not to mention the broad Anglo-Saxon commentary I was keeping up, so even if a female had turned up just then, I rather doubt he'd have noticed.