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Insects of the day

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  • Papi JoPapi Jo Posts: 4,254
    Hi all critter and bug lovers!
    Looks like our tiny friends have started waking up in our gardens for a new season.
    Yesterday Feb. 14th 2020 spotted one of each of the following in my garden (no pics, sorry):
    • honey bee (feeding on silberschmelze heath)
    • bumblebee (ditto)
    • firebug, Pyrrhocoris apterus (disturbed when I pruned my tree mallow 'Barnsley')
    • common brimstone, Gonepteryx rhamni, flying about (first noticed for the season nearly one month later back in 2018)
    Any insect spotting in your own gardens yet?


  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 30,090
    Very excited in early January to find a caterpillar had climbed up our bedroom's outside  door and turned into a chrysalis.  Yesterday it emerged and sat there drying its wings in the sun but I suspect it's just a cabbage white.  Oh well.


    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
    Plato
  • LiriodendronLiriodendron Posts: 8,328
    That's beautiful, @Papi Jo!  I love the way the hairs on the clematis bud mingle with those on the butterfly.
    Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
  • Papi JoPapi Jo Posts: 4,254
    First spotting of Xylocopa violacea, the violet carpenter bee in my garden this morning. Sorry, no pic.

  • FatsiaFatsia Posts: 35
    Looking at all the wonderful photos in this thread has truly lifted my spirits.  
    Yesterday I saw my first honeybees in the garden, feasting on the flowers of a skimmia, followed by a harlequin ladybird and plenty of bumble bees on my stinking hellebores. I'm looking forward to the butterflies, but no visitors as of yet!
  • Papi JoPapi Jo Posts: 4,254
    @Fatsia I'm glad those pics of insects helped you lift your spirits (in these troubled times).
    2 insects of the day in my garden, a bee and a ladybird (probably the Harlequin one).


  • FatsiaFatsia Posts: 35
    edited March 2020
    Stunning photos @Papi Jo. We all need a bit of a lift during these testing times. I'm isolating with my children and elderly father whom I care for, and the garden is keeping me going. 

    I will try and take a couple of photos tomorrow for a contribution to the thread. I doubt I will be nearly as skilled with a camera though! 
  • wild edgeswild edges Posts: 10,497
    Papi Jo said:
    First spotting of Xylocopa violacea, the violet carpenter bee in my garden this morning. Sorry, no pic.

    I have some sort of short circuit in my brain that reads that name as violent carpenter bee every time I see it written.
    If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
  • Papi JoPapi Jo Posts: 4,254
    Take it easy, @wild edges Actually, although the violet carpenter bee makes quite a noise as it flies about, it's not harmful and I consider it a rather friendly creature.
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