Blackbirds and Bumble Bees

Churchyards are often wonderful places for wildlife, and the churchyard at Montford in Shropshire, where I spent a couple of hours the other day, is certainly no exception.  I was delighted to be surrounded by nature on a warm and sunny day.  Many birds were singing, but there were two or three male blackbirds really hammering out their songs at each other.  Blackbirds will often select a high perch from which to sing, but I was interested to observe one singing quite coherently with a beak full of insects, and continuing to sing, albeit in a slightly more ragged fashion, as he flew down to a group of shrubs where (I presume) the nest must have been sited.  I'm not sure how such a volume of song can be produced with the beak closed; certainly when watching blackbirds giving their all to song you see the beak open and close as the sound is produced.

The churchyard was fairly full of flowers, and part had been left uncut to allow a good meadow flora to thrive.  Buttercups, vetches and ox-eye daisies predominated, with speedwells very attractive near the church door.  I was delighted also to see a small group of star of Bethlehem (ornithogallus, I think) half hidden in the long grass. I suppose this may have been planted, long ago - good to see it still thriving, though.

I spent some time looking at the south wall, very warm in the afternoon sun. This is a sandstone church, and the stone of the 18th century chancel seemed particularly porous. Mason bees and small wasps were dancing up and down the wall, investigating and occasionally entering holes.  I presume the bees were nesting in some of the holes, but it seemed to me that they could only locate the precise holes they were using by trial and error!  As I watched, a zebra spider made its way up the wall. As its name suggests, this little spider has a black-and-white striped abdomen, and one effect of this is that the jerky movements of this spider are accentuated. It almost seems to disappear from one place and reappear in another a little further on. Eventually, it too disappeared into a hole. I was interested also to see a black millipede making its way up the wall. Millipedes are vegetarian, so I wonder what this one hoped to find on the wall - perhaps algae or lichens. It was certainly there by intention, quite determinedly climbing the wall, investigating each hole or crack it came to.

The shaded north wall of the church was loud with the buzzing of bees. The reason for this was that cotoneasters were growing there, studded with tiny flowers that were obviously irresistible as a source of nectar. Nearly all the bees were bumble bees; with so much concern about possible declines in bee numbers, it was good to see - and hear - so many. I am no expert on bumble bees, much as I love them, but there were at least six or seven different species, by my reckoning, and maybe a hundred individual bees or more there at any one time.