Ivy Mining Bee flying to cliff-face nest

[dunksargent]

Langdyke Countryside Trust UK 'Swaddywell Nature Reserve' Ivy Mining Bee (Colletes hederae) observation trip 21 September. Camera and tripod set up on limestone cliff slope habitat where the solitary bees nest in cliff crevices. They also excavate (mine) nest holes in the ground. Species was new to UK in 2001 and 2020 is the first year observed at Swaddywell ... a disused limestone quarry.

This specimen is flying to a nest in the cliff crevice at top RHS ... where there are several separate sub-crevices used as nest holes.

Nikon 1 J5 / Nikkor 1 70-300mm VR / 26mm auto extension tubes / Zacuto 2.5x mag. optical finder on monitor/ ancient Gitzo travelling tripod / Novoflex fork mount ... low level seat is a folding aluminium single step with recycled packaging foam cushion.


Zoom lens at 175.3mm (1" sensor 2.7x crop factor thus 473mm FF equivalent), 1/1600sec, f7.1, ISO 400


Also have some macro video footage of bees digging nest holes ... but not sure if permissible to post videos.

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dunk

[rjlittlefield]

Also have some macro video footage of bees digging nest holes ... but not sure if permissible to post videos.

Photomacrography.net will not host videos, but if they are hosted someplace else it is certainly OK to link to them.

--Rik

[dunksargent]

Thank you Rik ... This is a lnk to the Langdyke Countryside Trust's Facebook page and my Ivy Mining Bees video ... shot with the Nikon 1 J5 / Nikkor 70-300mm etc. as illustrated above ... https://www.facebook.com/duncansargentk ... 5921282743

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dunk

[Guido]

In flight! Not easy, Fine job.

I got the same Gitzo I think.