Dear Readers, the ivy is in flower in my favourite front garden just along the street, and the pollinators are going mad. I stood with my camera for about fifteen minutes, watching the comings and goings, and while there don’t appear to be any ivy bees yet, there are absolutely masses of honeybees collecting pollen. Clearly, the hives are still active, probably over on the local allotment, and you can see how full the pollen baskets on the legs of this worker bee are (the little yellow bobbles at the side).

It’s not just honeybees though, there are a fair few flies about. Many of them are the greenbottles that I wrote about last week, gathering in a bit of pollen, but there are also batman hoverflies (so called because of the ‘batman logo’ on their thorax). I wrote about these rather handsome flies here, and was glad to make the species acquaintance again.

And then there’s this handsome wasp mimic hoverfly – I am unsure of species, but I do know that it’s a male, because there is no gap between his eyes. The batman hoverfly was a batman and not a batwoman for the same reason.

I’ve pointed out the wonderful self-seeded verbena along the street, and was pleased to see a) that the man with the weedkiller hasn’t been past recently and b) the common carder bumblebees are fuelling up.

And finally, you have probably noticed that the spiders are getting fat enough to notice now. I haven’t had any house spiders (yet) but this orbweb spider has made a web in the front window, just above a window box full of Mexican Fleabane. I imagine that she’ll get plenty of sustenance from the pollinators who pop in, and it’s hard to begrudge here. In fact, I’m quite pleased to see my new windows being gradually colonised by invertebrates, just as the old ones were.

Orb web spider (Araneus diadematus)

I know that some of you have had lots of ivy bees about in the garden in previous years (including the amazing lawn of Philip Buckley, who was kind enough to share some photos and video of his garden last year), so do let me know if you’ve seen any of these guys – there are lots of images here and here. I think the ivy might be flowering a little early this year, so I’m a bit anxious about whether there will be any left when the ivy bees hatch – it will be interesting to see what else the bees find to feed on. At least there’s a fair bit of sedum still around, at least here in London.