Sunday - bee twitching, naturists and new hoverflies

Sunday morning - not an early start but at 8am, it wasn't that warm and I thought it was too early to look for some bees that Chris Barlow has been seeing lately on the patch (I was wrong it seems) - Sharp-tailed Bee Coelioxys elongata and a leafcutter bee Megachile versicolor, both of which have been hanging around the rotten post where I've been seeing the Ectemnius wasps. He also found Fork-tailed Flower Bees Anthophora furcata nesting in the post.

So instead of going to check out the post,  I had a look at the sea. There was a gang of folks camping on the beach and a handful of them were in the sea - butt naked! Each to their own I suppose? One of the juvenile Cuckoos was still by the road with a hoard of 'toggers' on it.

I retreated to the post and track and left the nudists and the toggers to their own devices.

The Fork-tailed Flower Bees were busy excavating holes in the rotten wood and my Ectemnius wasp was briefly on the post - I don't think it is identifiable to species.

Fork-tailed Flower Bee Anthophora furcata Investigating a nest hole

Ectemnius wasp sp

Chris had seen the sharp-tailed bees further down the path to the hides so I moved between the post and the brambles looking for them as the sun came and went. I didn't see them but there was plenty of other things to keep me occupied.

There were a few hoverflies out, mostly black and yellow wasp mimic types of the genus Syrphus and Eupeodes - both tricky to ID. I did find a new species for me and for the patch Platycheirus rosarum.

Platycheirus rosarum. - new for the patch

Syrphus sp (male)

Helophilus pendulus (male)

Eupeodes corollae (female)

Syrphus ribesii (female)

Platycheirus albimanus (female)

I also found these Gorse Shield Bugs nymphs hatching from their eggs - amazing little things.

Tiny Gorse Shield Bug Piezodorus lituratus nymphs hatching from eggs 

And this strange fly -Sicus ferrugineus - It's larvae are endoparasites of bumble bees, they pupate and overwinter in their victims - nice!

Sicus ferrugineus

Back to the post and still no sign of the bees but I did find a Blue Shield Bug nymph and a looper caterpillar which remains unidentified.

Blue Shield Bug nymph (final instar) Zicrona caerulea

Looper caterpillar to be ID'd

I bumped into Bob Biggs who told me about wood and common sandpipers from the Budge screen. Commons Sands are tricky these days with no edge to the big pool so I headed south through the bushes to see it.

On my way back to the car I saw these two interesting beasts in the grass.

Non-biting midge species

Sciara hemerobioides -  one of the dark-winged fungus gnats seemingly. Bonny thing!

Chris was at the post when I got back, typically just as I headed off he had the sharp-tailed bee briefly on the post. I'll try for them again during the week.

Louise Hislop came up to see them and confirmed the Sharp-tailed Bee as new for the vice-county and the leaf cutter as new for the County. Well done Chris!

Ringing again

On Saturday morning the forecast looked a bit dicey for ringing but we gave it a go. When we first arrived, it was overcast with a light westerly, but with a light mizzle falling it was too wet to ring. By the time we wandered up for another look at the red-necked phalarope, which was still on the Budge fields, the mizzle had moved through.

We only put three nets up because of the threat of showers, which didn't materialise. A couple of chiffchaffs were in song when we were setting up and we soon caught a couple. Catching was slow though and we only caught 17 birds before the breeze picked up and we packed up at 12.30.

Chiffchaff

We did catch two male bullfinch, both first-year birds, this follows a single female last weekend. Bullies are rare at Druridge so nice to catch a few.

male bullfinch

This shieldbug was on the grass by our car, I think it is Red-legged Shieldbug Pentatoma rufipes

Red-legged shieldbug?

We've had notification from BTO about a couple of interesting recoveries.

The first was a reed warbler that we caught back in July, it already had a ring on it, but not one of ours. It was a breeding adult male, probably nesting in the little reedbed at the corner of the big pool.

Controlled reed warbler

BTO informed us that it had been originally ringed as juvenile back in August 2014 in Suffolk. I am presuming that it was caught on migration having been born up here somewhere but I could be completely wrong...

The second report was recovery of a blackcap that we ringed as a juvenile on the same day in July as we caught the reed warbler. 57 days later it had traveled 510km and was caught by the Cuckmere Ringing Group at Litlington in East Sussex.