Friday June 29 - everything else

Inevitably the moth trap also attracts other insects. To me, moths are hard enough, I do not have the time, patience, or equipment to start trying to work out what all the flies, water-boatmen, and beetles are. Even a ladybird was passed over as I looked for moths.

The only things that attract some attention are caddisflies, and I only look at them in case they turn out to be micro moths.

Caddis-fly sp

This one had me fooled, its wavy antennae leading me astray before JS put me right. He catches "thousands" of caddisflies, "bastard things" as he succinctly put it.

Friday was distinctly hot, and as Lyn and I sat in the dining room at lunchtime, we were interrupted by a damselfly which was repeatedly trying to fly through the glass of the dining-room window. It was a female Blue-tailed Damselfly and thus a garden tick. I dashed out to get a better look.

Blue-tailed Damselfly

Whilst spending the day in the garden, I was largely ignoring the birds, except to shoo Robins away. However that species was, I think, responsible for a broken egg I found on the lawn.

Egg

Now I have to admit that, for a birder, I have a profound ignorance of egg identification. However, although it seemed incredibly small, I do think this is a Robin's egg. Precisely what its presence means is also a mystery. Have the Robins fledged and the shell removed by the parents, or was the nest robbed by a predator and the egg discarded as we might casually drop a nut shell? I haven't seen any juvenile Robins yet this year.

Finally, the bee hotel which I nailed to the southern side of the shed a few years ago, is now occupied. To my excitement, two species are involved, but to my consternation I don't know what they are. One is a leaf-cutter bee, and the other is its parasite, a sharp-tailed bee.

Leaf-cutter bee with leaf

What could this bee?

Female sharp-tailed bee

Female sharp-tailed bee

I have been peering at the paintings and photographs even Steven Falk's excellent Bee field guide, and I've even tried to follow the keys he has written, but I get the impression that to make any real progress you need to examine their undersides, so for the time being they remain a mystery.

Potentially exciting though, because none of the sharp-tailed bees appears to be common.