{"id":2673,"date":"2016-06-23T09:10:23","date_gmt":"2016-06-23T08:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=2673"},"modified":"2016-06-23T09:10:23","modified_gmt":"2016-06-23T08:10:23","slug":"bee-spotting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=2673","title":{"rendered":"Bee spotting"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I find it is always difficult to photograph a bee, collecting nectar from flowers.\u00a0 They just don’t stay still long enough for me to get close enough and focus.\u00a0\u00a0 Fortunately last night I had a macro lens ready on the camera with plans to take some close-up pictures of the orchids which have appeared all over the Hatton field this year, when this little lady (at least I thinks she’s a lady) settled on the white clover beside me.\u00a0 She was rather splendid in her orange waistcoat.\u00a0 I tried several pictures, but only one was in focus.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6961\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I read a book a couple of years ago about bumblebees which opened my eyes to all the different species and their lifestyles. (A sting in the Tale<\/em> by Dave Goulson)\u00a0 I wondered what sort of a bee this was. Looking it up, it would seem that we had a Tree Bumblebee (bombus hypnorum<\/em>) visiting the Hatton field.\u00a0\u00a0 I wish I had read the article before I took the pictures, \u00a0because the tree\u00a0bumblebee is supposed to have a white tail.\u00a0 A close examination of all my pictures, however, including the fuzzy ones revealed that she was hiding her tail from me.\u00a0\u00a0 The other thing I discovered was that this species of bee was first recorded in the UK in 2001 and they are not supposed to be present in Scotland.\u00a0\u00a0 Was it or wasn’t it a tree bumblebee?<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6952\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_6966\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_6969\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lily and Poppy were not that interested.\u00a0 They were to busy exploring the long grass.\u00a0\u00a0 I did manage to take a\u00a0 few orchid pictures and of some of the magnificent cow parsley which is at its best just now beside the buttercups in the field, not to mention the purple grass.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6955\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_6965\"<\/a> \"IMG_6972\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I find it is always difficult to photograph a bee, collecting nectar from flowers.\u00a0 They just don’t stay still long enough for me to get close enough and focus.\u00a0\u00a0 Fortunately last night I had a macro lens ready on the camera with plans to take some close-up pictures of the orchids which have appeared all…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crudencountry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2673"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2684,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2673\/revisions\/2684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}