Tube feeder

If there's anything more pleasing than having a bowl of grape hyacinths flowering on the patio wall opposite the kitchen window, it's having two, bookending the stretch of wall like stone lions, only better. And if there's anything nicer than that, it's having your grape hyacinths meeting with approval from the earliest, plumpest, and surely most lovable of the solitary bees.

This morning I had to go to Stratford for a half hour of being tortured with sharp implements by my dental hygienist, an experience that's somewhere off the bottom of the last page of my list of favourite things to do. My mood today wasn't improved by the fact that I'd forgotten the appointment until R reminded me about it, and had been preparing to go out and enjoy myself at Farmoor. If I'd known at the point when my plan fell to the ground that there was going to be a Black Redstart at Farmoor today, I'd have paid the fine and skipped the appointment, though I doubt my teeth would have thanked me in the long run.

I also needed to buy some bird food, so on emerging from the dentist, numb on one side of my face and scowling all over it, I swung round to Stratford Garden Centre, and while I was wandering around admiring the plants (asyoudo), a second bowl of grape hyacinths somehow jumped into my trolley. Weird. Anyway, back at home I set it down on the wall and went inside to make myself some tea, but almost immediately I heard the unmistakeable sound of a Hairy-footed Flower Bee flying around outside the open back door. After quickly scooting upstairs for the camera I set to work to track him around the two bowls, trying not to cause him so much annoyance that he'd decide it was easier just to dine elsewhere. There were a couple of points when he did that charming Plumpie thing - stopping feeding and coming to hover right in front of me, like "WHAT?? What do you WANT???" - but luckily he was loving the muscari nectar too much to be put off for long. 

Hairy-footed Flower Bees are tubular flower specialists: they will browse open-faced flowers such as celandine if pushed to it, but their super-long tongues are designed for deep dipping, and they prefer to feed from flowers like this, as well as pulmonaria, primroses, wallflowers, and dead nettles, where they can access the parts that many other insects simply can't reach.