New Bee is a Newby

Once more we were Ragwort pulling and cutting today, an end is in sight, but then I was using binoculars. Still even this task can deliver surprises and today's was a new species for the reserve, Bombus hypnorum also known as the Tree Bumble-bee. It is not entirely unexpected but I have not seen it before despite looking. It is similar to the familiar brown Common Carder Bee, but with a black head and a black abdomen, with a pure white tail, the white tail is just visible in the picture. This is a new species for the reserve, but it is also only recently arrived in Britain, first found in 2000 it arrived from the continent, just as the Small Red-eyed Damselfly did at about the same time. So as well as being new to the reserve it is also quite new to the country, if the predictions about climate change are correct we can probably expect a good few more new species in the years to come.
I know I have pictured horse-flies before, but below is another of Chrysops caecutiens this time of a female perched on a hide window, they are actually quite attractive flies, so long as you can ignore the desire to bite great holes in you.
Few birds to report today, 3 Egyptian Geese on Ibsley Water and at least one Yellow-legged Gull in the same place were moderately noteworthy. The numbers of large gulls are really picking up int he afternoons now and it would probably be worth looking for sub-adult Caspian Gulls which start to appear at this time of year. A few Swifts over the Centre were the first I have seen in a few days and they will not be around for very much longer now. I suspect they will go rather early this year as they should have bred well and fledged their young in good time with all the fine weather we have had.