Yellow Legs and a Small Heath

 I have another interesting pair of finds for you from our work campus, one of them a first timer on campus, the other a completely brand new species!

The new kid on the block was a tiny small heath butterfly. This is a dead giveaway that the sun is shining, because they never fly unless it is bright, and they never fly more than about a metre above the ground. They are very difficult to photograph however, as they spook very easily - it took ten minutes of chasing this one around a patch of grassland before it let me get anywhere near enough to take a photograph.

The brand new species for me was a yellow legged mining bee. It makes sense that they are around, because we have plenty of nomad cuckoo bees at work and this is the species they parasitise. The yellow hairs on the leg made it easy to recognise, especially as I'd seen a picture of one on twitter the day before!

All the anxiety of Indian variants. I have a month to go before my second shot.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCRackeredNature 21.05.21