To bee or not to bee?

Nature is full of ingenious solutions to the problem of staying alive. This harmless little hoverfly species Volucella bombylans has chosen the art of mimicry, disguising itself in a bumblebee’s warning stripes to deter predators. — Photographs copyright of Claire Stott/Grey Feather Photography © 2023www.greyfeatherphotography.com If you like what you see, you can follow me…

2022 Highlights – The ‘Bee Garden’

As we wave goodbye to another year and welcome in 2023, it’s the time to look back once again at my own personal highlights from the last twelve months. Top of this list just had to be the success of my ‘bee garden’, a small patch of garden which I transformed into a mini wildflower…

New neighbours

After a frantic breeding season my red mason bees have now disappeared from the garden. Inside the bee box their larvae are concealed safe inside the nest chambers to await the arrival of next spring when they will emerge as adults and begin the cycle all over again. In their place another species of bees…

Sighting: Red Mason Bee

One of the earliest bees to emerge into a British spring, the red mason bee is arguably one of the most striking of the solitary bees with a large jaws and a hairy gingery/red body. Mason bees are named for their habit of nesting in cavities in walls and masonry, perhaps will we see a…

Sighting: Golden Ringed Dragonfly

Having spent some 6 years now living beside the harbour ‘gap’ in Aberystwyth I feel I have come to know the area and it’s inhabitants rather well. Even so there is still the occasional new sighting to surprise me. Whilst the delicate damselflies are a relatively common sight during the heat of the summer I…