While I was in Birmingham, I visited a
buttercup field and found
Ragged Robin on a ragged verge.
However, once I am home, it can be hard to find time during the working week to do anything other than meet work and other commitments. It is fortunately that
others doing the Wildlife Trusts' #30DaysWild challenge are teaching me how to steal moments from my day and give them to nature.
I'm also going to confess to a blogging sin - my posts are out of order. I wrote up my Day 4/5 BioBlitz before this post about Day 2 and 3.
Day 2 - Beetles at the Watford Junction
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| Sitting next to wildflowers while waiting for the train. |
On Day 2, I travelled home from Birmingham to Uckfield. At Watford Junction, while I was waiting for the train, I sat on a low wall next to some wildflowers.
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| Oedemera Lurida at Watford Junction. |
A couple of long, narrow Oedemera Lurida beetles jumped onto my bag and I had to carefully return them to their flowers. I love the way nature finds its way into the unlikeliest places.
Day 3 - Taking a moment from the laptop
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| Foxgloves, Uckfield Sussex |
Friday was exceptionally busy. I took a moment away from the laptop to admire self-sown foxgloves in our garden.
Looking forward to the Garden BioBlitz
Due to dull weather we haven't had many bees but during the next day's
Garden BioBlitz, I would see nine different species including a number going in-and-out of the Foxglove bells.
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| Red Mason Bee (Osmia bicornis) - from the next weekend's BioBlitz |
I used Ryan Clark's-easy-to understand
guide to solitary bees on the Wildlfe Trusts website to help me understand the different types including the Mason bees, who store their pollen on the underside of their abdomen as shown in the photo and large Wool carder bee (Anthidium maculatum), which lead me a merry dance on BioBlitz day. So a big thank you to Ryan for his wonderful guide and also to the patient and hard working verifiers on
iRecord, who verified my sightings and tactfully corrected my errors.
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