Garden Update

I put out the moth trap last night for the second time this year. There are definitely moths about as I saw one drift past the kitchen window during the evening. With a minimum temperature last night of 3.7 degrees centigrade I was a little more hopeful than last week when temperatures dropped below freezing but when I opened the trap this morning there were no moths to be seen again.

Bird-wise the garden is fairly quiet with lesser numbers of the regular species visiting the feeders. Blue tits are still investigating the nest box and I will be keeping my eye out for a garden chiffchaff in the next few weeks.

I did find an unusual bee buzzing around the kitchen yesterday. I think it may have been a Hairy-footed flower bee (Anthophora plumipes) a species of solitary bee or masonry bee. I am not sure how it got in the kitchen unless it flew in through an open window or apparently they can emerge down open chimneys in early spring from nest burrows excavated there the previous year. I managed to catch it in a moth pot and released it in the garden on a clump of flowering heather.



Hairy-footed flower bee? Please feel free to let me know if the identification is wrong.



Daffodils are now in flower in several parts of the garden.




"Daffy-down-dilly has come up to town,
In a yellow petticoat and a green gown."