Lessons in bees

I was out on Chobham Common when we came across a bumble bee with an orange-red tail and a faint white band on the thorax. It was similar to a male Red-Tailed bumble bee, but not with the same as ones I was used to from my patch. so /i took lots of photos, and was going through them at home when I cropped one and got this.

... and just have a look at the hairs on the leg. Bright orange! clearly this is a Red-Shanked Carder Bee. No need to look any further, so I triumphantly tweet this out, and somewhat arrogantly copy in the wonderful Steven Falk, author of the excellent The Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland. I duly wait the applause, and instead get a tweet back saying this is just a male Red-Tailed Bumble Bee. Surely he must be wrong! So I protest and back comes a polite tweet pointing out that the extra photo I attached shows white on the face, and this is diagnostic of Red-Tailed Bumble bee, and that Red-Tailed Bumble bees have red whiskers on their legs too.

So that is me told. I have clearly not got my Bee eye in yet and am still having basic difficulties understanding the variety of the common bees. Like those people who take pictures of young Blackbirds and think they have something rare. Anyway, I am now wiser, and very grateful for Mr Falk sharing his expertise with people bombarding him with mis-identified photos of common bees, something he does regularly and with patience and charm; we are indeed lucky to have naturalists so generous with their time and expertise.

Meanwhile this tweet has embarrassingly got a life of its own. Despite the complete mis-identification, lots of people are now liking this and retweeting it. It has become my most popular tweet. I'm tempted to delete it ...