Garden is buzzing

Lovely colour you have in the garden. Love the picture with the bees and pollen sacks. Talking about bees, I’ve just signed up to a interactive talk about bees by my local wildlife trust in Shropshire. It will cover things like the different types of bees, their habitats and what you can do to entice them in to your garden.

That is one of many good things about the wildlife trusts. Victoria was involved with similar initiatives for wildlife trust of S & W Wales for dragon flies and damsel flies, and hedgehogs.

Off to look into soldier beetles now, ta😊

Lol, aka hogweed bonking beetle. Apparently they spend much of their adult lives mating...

I did know it by its hogweed name when I was a child as my older brothers found it funny. Many inverts spend most of their lives as juveniles and only emerge as adults for a few weeks and really they are just there to mate. the mayfly only lives as an adult for one day. it doesn't have any mouth parts as it doesn't even have a meal.

Made me laugh though...
I'm sure it's a local corruption of an old English or French word or the like. Nothing to do with the modern usage

it was coined in the 1980's as bonking was a regular word used in the popular press in that decade. It was put into it's name as a joke in a major scientific paper and it stuck. So it is modern Darren and as they only survive as adults for a couple of months mating is what they do.

So the name was created in the eighties?

Your garden is beautiful . The storms the other night were very welcome but it is very hot across the Humber.

I wish it would have a really good thunderstorm as it is so humid here and the thrips/thunder bugs are driving me mad. we can hear the odd rumble of thunder and then a few heavy splashes then nothing. the photos are very selective though, I don't show the weeds ;o) unless I want to show British natives.

Yes Darren the hogweed beetle had the word bonking put in between the two names in the early/ mid 1980's .it was meant to be a silly joke but as it was a scientific paper it was adopted and then it was too late to alter it.
The hogweed group of plants is a favourite plant for them.

Beautiful and fascinating blog - lots for me to look up about bees. We have a frog in our garden which is a huge surprise - we don't have a pond but he's been happy in a variety of my pots for about 3 weeks!

Well, you live & learn...
Sort of an equally crap naming like Boaty McBoatface then?

Wonderful to see so much activity in your lovely garden.

The juvenile blackbird is very pretty, looks as if he borrowed some feathers of the Starling on his chest. The little Violas are very, very prolific as you say and will seed themselves all over the place, we have a whole bed which seeded from goodness knows where! Also of course in the path and grass, but so pretty.

when I first saw the blackbird I thought it might be a young thrush as we have them in the garden. But a blackbird was feeding it so I decided it must be a blackbird.

on the inside of a window in the conservatory, this morning, we found a swallow tailed moth. one of our largest native moths. the caterpillar feeds on elder, hawthorn, honeysuckle and ivy and I have all 4 plants in the garden :)
i'll post a picture later.

Lovely, colourful flowers, Eileen. Pretty wildlife captures too. We’ve had a few young blackies in the garden too. Loving the bees buzzing around at the moment. We’ve had loads of hoverflies surrounding a euonymus which has tiny cream flowers on it - seems a favourite!

hoverflies love any nectar rich flowers and pollinate many species of flowers . their larva eat greenfly too so a win-win situation.

You`re definitely doing your bit for the wildlife and providing us with a lovely informative and colourful blog.

Stroller has said it all.......thanks keep them coming Seaburn......

according to my daughter there are over 200 species of hoverfly so I wont be doing one on them ;p

I have a case of viola envy - yours pop up uninvited and I have given up trying here...odd as dog violets grow faster than I can pull them out.. Your flowers are lovely - worth all he work you put in during the spring

Hubby gave them a haircut tonight :( he says they will be back in a few days. I find allsorts popping up and I get some nice variation in the pansies. I also have loads of dog violets and I am pulling them by the bucket load.

Lovely blog Seaburn, your garden is a hive of natures industry, always something of interest going on..

It's lovely to see so much wildlife hard at work. In the last few years bees & butterflies have been notoriously absent from the gardens, though this year I've seen more bees than in quite some time. Butterflies though still seem as scarce as they have been for the last few years. Not even the "Butterfly Bush" seems to attract many any longer.

The local council gardeners planted lots of Veronica last autumn & they are an absolute magnet for bees!!! So I saw more bees this spring than I have seen for quite a number of years.

Gosh Eileen, 300 species of hoverfly! Amazing! Thanks for the info, Really interesting. :)

well its over 200 and daughter did sit and count the species and got to 276 but as she says she may have miscounted. I have noticed they have very different bandwidths and colour ways on their bodies. not a family I plan to learn however.