Tag Archives: Great British Bee Count

30 Days Wild 2018 – Day 09

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Exploring the garden today I found lots of bees on the Geranium – Early bumblebee, Honeybee and Brown carder bee (I think! I’m not brilliant at identifying bees!!).  The Geranium is always a favorite plant for them and there is always lots of activity around it. 

Each year Friends of the Earth run the Great British Bee Count (May 17th – June 30th 2018).  You can download the app for both android and apple which makes it all super quick and easy.  Its very simple; spot a bee, take a photo if possible, identify it, note the weather conditions and habitat, enter your location and send off the data 🙂 At the time of writing this 197,292 bees had been logged so far this year, with 21 days to go. 

As we all know our pollinators are having a very tough time with loss of habitat, intensive farming and changes in our climate.  The more we know about all of our pollinators, the more we can help them.  By adding sightings to the bee count more data is added to the Pollinator Monitoring Scheme, which is basically a health check of our bees and other pollinators.  35 of the UK bees species is under threat of extinction so knowing the abundance of them and their location, is all valuable information. 

We can all do a little to help all of our insects whether it is taking in part in the Bee Count or other record schemes, converting part of the garden to a mini wildflower meadow or just leaving the dandelions to grow in the lawn, every little thing helps.  Have you seen any bees today? 

30 Days Wild 2017 – Days 16 – 20

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Day 16 – Today before leaving work I crossed the car park to the lavender bushes to look for bees to do a Great British Bee Count.  My timed count produced two Banded white-tailed bumblebee’s collecting nectar.

Day 17 – My Mum decided she wanted to go and see the Bath Peregrines and do some shopping for her holiday. I was happy to go and see the Peregrines but a bit more reluctant about the shopping! I checked the webcam before we left and couldn’t see them, though hoped they would be around somewhere for her to see.  Thankfully as we were walking towards the Church I could hear them calling.  We had a brief viewing before they headed out of sight to the back of the nest box.  We headed off to do the holiday shopping which thankfully didn’t take very long so we could head back to see the Peregrines for a good hour afterwards.  There was much more activity with food being brought in for them and feathers raining down from the spire.  Once home I decided a relaxing hour in the garden listening to birds was required – with an ice cream of course!

Day 18 – Today I tried to photograph the Swifts that swoop down over the garden, I was unsuccessful! They would show up, do one fly over and disappear for the next half an hour! While I was waiting for them I topped up all the bird baths.  The fledgling Blue Tits seem to favour the ‘poppy’ to drink from, its sheltered by a tree and far too small for any of the larger birds to use.

Day 19 – I realised that I really haven’t seen any Ladybird’s this year! I waited for the temperature to drop a little outside and headed out into the cool of the evening to explore the garden specifically for Ladybirds.  I have seen lots of Ladybird larvae this year and found some more in the garden tonight.  The closest I got to an adult was an emerging Ladybird though.  I have never seen this before so was quiet exited to have found it, it was located on the underside of a Hazel leaf.

Day 20 – on Day 15 I briefly saw a Badger so tonight I went back to the same location to have another look around. Driving down the farmers track I saw the back end of a Badger disappear into the hedgerow. I knew it was about, and it had headed to where I believe part of its sett to be. I parked at the bottom of the track and waited, hoping it would reappear. 40 minutes later it walked out over the track and disappeared in seconds. I was amazed to see it again. I’m looking forward to getting to know it better 🙂