I saw bumble bees and a deer up the Welcombe Hills

About this time of year the brambles and blackberries begin to flower. For me that signals the time to start looking for bumble bee activity up the Welcombe Hills. I find it's best to locate south facing bushes as these will tend to flower earliest. Early days with just a few flowers showing amongst the wild roses that have been flowering a week or so.
Until now, most of the bumble bee activity has been in gardens where the jasmines and thymes have been flowering for several weeks. Well at least that's been the case in our garden. I'll post some bumble bee pics I took this week end in our garden.
Anyway, I took to one of my favourite spots for bumble bees this morning where sheltered bushes of blackberry catch the morning and early afternoon sun. Sure enough I came across these fellows.

I find bumble bee identification quite difficult. This is because the male, worker and queen all differ, colours can fade on individuals and key identification features include the shape of the head, banding and tail. That means you have to get a good range of pictures to positively ID. Then there are cuckoo bees…these are solitary bees and don't collect pollen so they tend to have have hairy legs. Otherwise they can resemble true bumble bees. Luckily Bumblebee Conservation Trust  and the Natural History Museum both have excellent tools to help.

The bumble bee on the left is probably (!) an early Bumblebee.









On the way back home we caught sight of this deer nibbling at the hedgerow.

Not the clearest of pics I agree. I thought I knew my deer but when it came to naming this one I was stumped. Then I came across the short video from Spring Watch. It seems the surest way of identifying deer is to look at their bums. The Roe deer has virtually no tail and a plain backside.


NB I edited this post to correct the line about hairy legs and cuckoo bees. In the original I got it the wrong way round!