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Hi , I have spotted an unusual wild flower on a chemical / food manufacturing plant that I work on , it's about 12 inches tall has small purple flowers an its leaves / flowers look exactly like bumble bees the site gardener thinks its quite rare. We would love to know what its called an I will try an take a sneaky picture of it (cameras are not allowed on the site) but I will find a way .
Regards
Neil

Really liking this new Q@A section with Chris and Sam, I think it works well as a format for answering some of the flickr group questions. It has a good relaxed and focused aspect to it. Definitely have to keep this up for when autumnwatch arrives too. Good 10p tip. I used to do that with strange insects too. Wondering how long it will be before someone posts an image with a poo with a quid stuck in he top.lol.

Right, I'm off to HDR some poo. One for Chris's wall.lol

Can anyone tell me if there is a known population of red kites in the southeast kent area, near the towns of dover and deal, I know we have a good and thriving buzzard population here not to mention al the little kestrals and owls, but whilst in my car the other day (and no lovely dslr to hand I dint get any photos)I saw a lovely bird quite away from me that deffinately had a forked tail and seemed to have a reddish glow in the sunlight. If so I am gonna be truly happy about it!!!.

Thanks for answering my question Chris and Sam!! :-D I would be very happy to see a blue tit laying an egg, but as CGP said I think its unlikely! Didn't think I'd ever get a question answered so big thanks!

Ps Fab news on the mason bee too! I'm doing a project to work out which nesting material they prefer, with variations in shape and tube material and I know they are in decline, so its fab to hear they're laying their eggs! :)

Love the poo weekly with Dr poo and Turdis, I saw that on the messageboard and I'm sure they'll be very happy to see the reference!

PS Neil that sounds from your description like a bee orchid, which is in that case very rare but don't take my word for it necessarily!

for a while now i've been getting large numbers of starlings in my back garden, just a couple of weeks ago i counted around 16 starlings at once. the starlings were both adults and juveniles. this week however i have not seen any starlings at all, anybody have any idea where they have gone? they seem to have dissapeared since this spell of hot dry weather arrived. the only birds i have seen this week on the feeders are 2 house sparrows and 3 wood pidgeons.

I have just uncovered a large Bumble Bee hive in my brothers back garden, I was going to put a patio here for him but the hive has stoped that. I did not know they were an endagered species, I didnt know they were so harmless, I really didnt know any thing about them, they are facinating to watch, I can figure out most of what they are up to but some baffles me. I seem to have dig up an egg chamber, they did swarm on me, just landing on my face and chest, i did panic a bit and ran away brushing them off but they didnt sting me at all!! They then seem to setale down and get on with repairing the damage, I put some old logs on top of the hole to cover it a bit, the part I dug up was still being looked after by them so I covered it with a bucket leaving a space for them to get in and out, all seems ok with them but I would like to know if I have done the right thing, Id hate to think I had distroyed there whole hive.

Ha ha, loved it!


Thanks!

Perfect; fun, informative, short & snappy. Long may they continue!

Big fan of Bees in general. I also want to encourage Masonry Bee activity, adding to success I've enjoyed with Leafcutter Bees; who made great use of an old sawn up 5" post drilled with 4" long tunnels. Simple to create and fascinating behaviour to watch. Only arguable downside being the beautiful doily leaf patterns left behind on select plants. Small price to pay for their starring role in my blog ;-)

One year I'll graduate to keeping Honey Bees!

This is a great idea! Fun and informative like the actual shows themselves. But what is it with the sound (or lack of it) on the sequence? Very difficult to hear. Please correct this for any future segments.

This is a wonderful addition to the Springwatch repertoire of informative & entertaining programming.

Top marks! Hope it returns for Autumnwatch.

hello this my first message ive just registered and have been in awe of the robin nest that i in my mothers shed!! there are three beautiful babies inside who are now almost 3 weeks old and the constant care from the mum and dad robins is quite remarkable they have made the nest in an old hanging basket wasnt quite sure who to tell its truly magical never seen anything quite like it

to chris the poo expert
every morning when we have had breakfast we go outside and on the PVC window bottom there is some kind of animal droppings , the droppings look like they could be from a mouse but the window is five feet from the ground . yesterday I cleaned the pvc with bleach but this morning they are there again, are ther any other animal that it could be "like maybe a bat". I was going to enclose a photo but I dont see any way of doing it on this page

thank you thorogoodone

Not sure who might like to know but I had a hornet by my garden pond today. As far as I knew they did not live this far north.

98% sure as had a good look at it for about 40 seconds from about 5 feet.

Very much like a wasp but must have been about and inch and a half long and looked pretty threatening although I understand they are actually pretty docile

Glenfield Leicestershire

hi we have just been enjoying watching the birds in the garden.and have just watched a baby blackbird feeding a baby thrush is this unusual.

Hi ALL,
We have a fuchsia in a pot on the patio table (nothing unusual there); however, we sit eating alfresco whilst a (large) leaf-cutting bee constantly darts back & forth entering a small hole in the pot with beautifully cut long curved leaf sections wrapped under its entire length.
I read on the www. that they are native to North America?
Questions: Will this lovely creature ever damage the fuchsia and are they now native to Milton Keynes?

Kind regards
David Harvey

Has anyone else seen flocks of jackdaws in almost apocalyptic numbers? From my classroom in a Hersham school in Surrey I can hear a cacophany of noise from the trees outside as they continuously call to each other. 20 or more can be seen feeding within small areas of the playground, but when they take to the air they look like the flocks of starlings we see before they roost. I estimate an extended community size well in excess of 100 birds. I just wish I had brought my camera to school today!!

DearSpringwatch team - Managed to finish watching recorded episodes of spring watch and wanted to say a big thank you to everyone for another fantastic series. Kate, Simon, Martin and Gordon as good as ever - and I have to say that after my initial disappointment last year that Bill was not able to be involved, I have been won over by Chris Packhams enthusiasm, knowledge and sense of humour. And it was lovely to see Bill again during the great twitch off, although of course he does not refer to himself as a twitcher. Enjoyed the bird poo squashing that revealed what the bird had been eating. I like to find hedgehog poo in the garden, and even better if I manage to see a hedgehog too. Enjoyed the piece on nightjars, I have been to see them at Skipwith common in Yorkshire. At age 45.5 I still love to find frogspawn and tadpoles in the spring and conkers in the autumn. And to see all the insect life in the garden (when buying plants from a garden centre I don’t mind the one’s with aphids as I just hope they will help to attract ladybirds, hoverflies and lacewings - lacewing eggs are fantastic). I also don’t mind at all finding holes in the leaves of my garden plants as I like to try and identify what has caused them. When out in the countryside, as well as looking out for animals I also like to see what plants there are (the fact that they don’t run, fly or scuttle away makes them nice and easy to look at and photograph).

Would it be possible perhaps in the next series for pieces to be shown on say different Hoverflies that people could look out for e.g. the ones that have the rat tailed maggots, pretty revolting in their larval stage but then turn into such wonderful adults. Also it would be good to see something about native plants and trees.
I was really interested to see that Chris will be doing a talk at Harrogate but then disappointed when I realised I will probably be on holiday in Wales at the time.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone involved. Yvonne.

Having just watched our resident Blackbirds fledge brood No.3 over the last couple of days they are now back building a new nest close to the site of their last one (used for the last 2 broods).

Brood 1 raised 3 definate, possibly 4, chicks successfully.
Brood 2, 6 definate, possibly 7!
Brood 3, again 3 more definate, possibly 4.

Is this usual??

Is it likely to carry on much longer as the cat is desperate to get back outside?!!

Hi, I regularly have a wood pigeon in my garden who, when first appeared, seemed to have some growths on his foot. The next time I saw it it had growths on it's beak. It now appears to have growths on it's head also. It is able to fly but when feeding in the garden it is practically lying down. Has anybody seen anything like this, or know what the problem may be?

I have a bird box that has been taken over by wasps. They are no trouble at the moment in fact it is fascinating watching them construct their new home. I noticed one of the wasps flying around my pond and to my utter amazement it chased and caught a fly then flew to a nearby tree, landed on a leaf and continued to enjoy its gains. Did my eyes deceive me? I am totally amazed and my husband does not believe me. Help anyone?

Jo-fish

I love Springwatch ... BUT ... I detest the breathless 5-yr-old style! Please, please can we be for grownups, at least most of the time? I have an attention span of well over an hour, if interested, I don't need encouraging and I loathe seeing 40-somethings trying to look "cute" and "kiddie-ish".

The whole world never seems to grow up nowadays. It would be nice to encourage it to. Just about all science programmes are like this ow, full of SFX and bouncing red-setter presenters with cute hairdos.

You lot all can be good and interesting without having to be gummy parents to 5-yr-olds. Wish you would :-).

I watched every single programme and bored my friends to death with telling them about it while we camped on Dartmoor the following week but I really would like not to have to put up with the rubbish style :-).

Elen

Hi Chris..having read an article on leafcutter bees being an American species,is it unusual to have a colony of them in our greenhouse? We noticed them a few weeks ago,busily removeing soil fro the bottom of a large pot containing a cactus and then proceeding to fly into the recess with rolled up leaves. Is this a norm? Will the young survive the winter months in the greenhouse?

I've been hearing cicadas in the garden for about two weeks now; I can't recall hearing them in this country before. Have they spread here (Somerset) because of global warming? How widespread are they?

Hi, I have just registered so this is my first message! A couple of weeks ago we were staying on Loch Aichlort where we frequently get sitings of Otter, seals, golden eagles and a sea eagle - yes a fantastic place - and this is just from the sitting room window!! But this last time, quite late in the day I saw a very large fin followed by a smaller one. I immediately thought shark because of the size and then thought how silly I was being. So thought dolphin followed by a youngster. But to my wonderful surprise it was a basking shark as it has been seen again in the last few days! It was very close in which surprised me. Can anyone tell me how long they will 'hang around' (they were first seen last summer)or will we have to wait till next summer?
ps there is also a pine marten resident which although exciting for us townie visitors it is according to the locals a real 'wee pest' especially if it gets into the house!

Can anyone give us some advice please! we have a pair of Robins that have nested in some ivy on our garden wall, and the 2 little ones, (not yet able to fly) keep jumping out and wandering around the garden. Next doors cat is going to get them, so we have scooped them up and put them in our daughters trampoline, which is netted around the sides so the cat can't get them! Mum and Dad have found them as the nest was quite close and are still happily feeding them, and we have put twigs and leaves and a shade over the trampoline at one side. Have we done the right thing? as soon as the weather warms up again they will likely roast in there, but we had no idea what to do!? and felt we had to keep them from the cat, any advice please much appreciated....... , when are they likely to be able to fly, have they a chance...?

Lots of frogs in our garden pond.All of them seem to have "normal"
markings,except for one which is deep red.Possible cause of this?