Fool me twice

Late this afternoon I went out into the garden to take care of a situation that had been niggling me, which was the fact that a huge clump of nettles and rosebay willowherb had almost taken over one of the side borders of the top garden. It's not that I mind weeds, but rosebay willowherb in particular is extremely invasive, and can choke out all other plants in the vicinity if you give it too much leeway, and they were crowding around a young whitebeam tree R and I planted back in 2021, which I'm very keen to preserve. So they had to go.

I'd excavated most of the way to the back fence when I became aware of a furious buzzing, so I stopped work and looked around, and found I was being circled by a very annoyed leafcutter bee - leaf in jaws - who was zooming around the cleared area as if she didn't know what to do next. Fearing that I'd disturbed her nest in some way, I was deeply contrite, but as I couldn't undo the clearance that had already taken place I simply stopped work, waited, and watched. After a few more circles she landed high up on one of the concrete fence posts, where I could see some large holes, and I naturally jumped to the conclusion that one of them must be her nest burrow. So I waited some more, and watched some more, while she repeatedly pushed the leaf a little way into one of the holes and then pulled it out again... right up to the moment when I stepped back out of the border to get my camera, when she suddenly plunged like an Olympic diver to a hole near the bottom of the post, and completely disappeared inside it.

Foiled!

I squatted down opposite the hole and waited for several minutes before she reappeared, backwards, sans leaf, checked her handiwork inside the cavity a couple more times, and then flew away. Tonight's extra shows the moment when she turned to leave, her wings already working. I then waited some more, snipping away the odd extra weed, and after about five minutes she came back with another piece of leaf. I was ready to drop to my haunches in the hope of capturing her taking it into her nest, but once again she landed up at the top of the post. The main image shows what I now know was a feint in the direction of one of her 'decoy' holes, because as soon as I stepped forward and stood on tiptoe to try to get a better angle on the scene she immediately dived again, and by the time I'd stepped back and knelt down she was safely back inside the lower hole.

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

If another human had pranked me like this I'd have been very annoyed (unless it was the Boy Wonder, obviously), but as it was a hard-working bee, protecting her offspring from a potential predator, I just raised a metaphorical hat to her and laughed. And then waited a full twenty minutes for her to come back and try to fool me third time, but to no avail. It's possible that with the tall weeds removed she feels that this nest hole is now too exposed, so she's sealed it and gone off to look for another one - but it's equally possible that she simply waited me me out, and resumed work once I'd gone back to the house for dinner.

As to identification, both of these images show that her orange pollen brush goes right to the end of her abdomen, and even extends a little way up onto the sides, which I think makes her a Patchwork Leafcutter Bee (Megachile centuncularis). 

R: C4.