Out for an hour after the rain

The Safari woke up to rain this morning. A 'slightly' welcome change after all the recent hot sunny days. 

Once the rain had stopped around lunchtime we had a quick mooch in the garden looking at the bees..

Only one  of them wasn't a bee but a bee mimicing hoverfly, a Narcissus Blub Fly. It comes in several forms, this one is mimicing Red Tailed Bumble Bee.

While making our lunch we spotted a female Blackbird that had just had a bath in the waterfall - why do they chose the running water over the higher ornamental bird-bath which you would expect would be safer from potential predators having a much wider view.

Have you ever seen such a narked looking bird in your life?

The regular male House Sparrow put in typically brief appearance at the feeder this time on the suet block which it seems to be beginning to prefer to the seed feeder.

He always seems to have his back to us

After lunch we were able to meet up with CR on his lunch break, on the way out of the front door we heard House Sparrows very close by. They were close by, there were a couple of fledglings being fed by mum in the Honeysuckle over the front gate - great to see.

We met up with CR at the start of the North Blackpool Pond Trail a short walk from Base Camp, the aim being to see some Bee Orchids. It was good to get out for some fresh air and exercise after being cooped up for three weeks. Our plan was to try to find and count them...and of course get some pics providing the rain held off. 

An extremely fresh looking Large Skipper butterfly caught our attention straight away but didn't hang around for a pic. We looked around the usual spots for Bee Orchids but didn't find any, there mus t be some somewhere though. CR found a nice looking Latticed Heath moth that was decidedly camera-shy. Less well patterned but much brighter coloured was a cracking Common Blue butterfly.

The site is only small and it didn't take long to wander round finding a fresh Small Tortoiseshell butterfly and several Common Blue damselflies. CR's excellent eyesight picked out this lovely little Picture Winged Fly on a Bramble leaf.

But did we find any Bee Orchids in the end? Of course we did, in the end we found at least 10 - somehow we sort of lost count. Most of them were just coming in to flower with one or two flowers open.

Always good to see

This one has it's two pollen 'danglers' but one looks to be fastened up to the underside of the upper petal. Has anyone seen this before?

An hour out was enough for us for starters, we were cream crackered when we got home.

Where to next? A family day tomorrow so there might not be much to report on.
In the meantime let us know who's as pretty as a picture in your outback.