Corona Wildlife Diary: Day Thirty-five

LewesWildlife
, 21 April 2020
Corona Wildlife Diary: Day Thirty-five
Red Mason Bee / Steven Falk

With the world shut down around us the uplifting role that wildlife plays in our lives becomes more vital than ever. So, for my own sanity as much as anything, I’m going to keep a daily diary of what I find around my garden. Photograph the wildlife you can see from your window or in your garden and post your pictures on the ‘Sussex Wildlife Trust Nature Table’ page.

Day Thirty-five

Five weeks! Thirty days ago I filmed a quick guided tour of the garden (see it here). I mentioned that back in 2016, when David Bowie died I went into the garden with the inadvisable combination of a drill and a bottle of wine and made a bee hotel in his honour. I'm not sure what inspired me to commemorate Bowie with a bee hotel. I can't really think of any link between David Bowie and bees (apart from this) . (And Kevin just messaged to say that I could also claim 'Absolute Bee-ginners' as a link - but that's really stretching it).

I was sad to read yesterday that Matthew Seligman, who played bass for Bowie at Live Aid, died from Coronavirus over the weekend. Matthew played bass in one of my favourite bands - The Soft Boys (check out 'Queen of Eyes' here). And The Soft Boys' great debut album does have a link to today's bee-related diary. 

Soft Boys A Can Of Bees UK Vinyl

So yesterday, to commemorate Matthew Seligman, I was back out in the garden with my drill. I didn't have a bottle of wine this time as I didn't want to put any more pressure on Brighton's A&E department.

I recently read a blog by my colleague Barry Yates (who's just celebrated 36 years working at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, read about him here). We know Barry, of course, as the guy who beats us all in the Back Garden Bird Race each week from his 'unfair' garden next to Rye Harbour. But he's also pretty nifty with a drill.

Barry's blog was encouraging people to make a bee hotel in their garden. Nip over and read Barry's inspiring blog here. There are some incredible slow-motion clips of bees filmed by Barry. 


When most of us think of bees we think of Honey Bees (which live in hives) and the chunky bumblebees (which also live in hectic colonies). But most of the bees in Britain go it alone and live a solitary existence. In fact in Britain we have around 270 bee species and about 250 of them are solitary bees. The solitary bees may vary in size but they all play an important role for us pollinating our plants. Many species make their own homes in holes in the ground but some use old beetle holes in wood - and you can help them by replicating these holey homes with a bee hotel. It's easy to make a bee hotel and it's a small improvement you can make in your garden or windowsill which will really help your local pollinators.

Barry's Bee

(Barry's bee hotel in Rye. I bet he has more species of bee than me as well)

(Oh, and I must note here that I can't actually say 'bee hotel' without singing it in the crooning style of Chris Isaak's 'Blue Hotel'. And why are they called 'bee hotels' anyway? Surely 'bee B&B' would be better).

I had some chunks of wood lying about (from another recent garden 'project' I'll tell you about another day) and, following Barry's advice, drilled them full of holes of different sizes.

P1040119

But I didn't stop there. In Barry's blog he also suggested "You could also drill holes into fence posts or other wood in a sunny location". So I kind of went a little bit crazy with the drill. I had some logs lying around in the garage and I dug some holes and erected them in the sunniest corner of the garden and then attacked them with the drill,  like some mad dentist.

P1040131

I'm actually quite impressed with my hotel construction work. I'll keep you posted when the local bees start to check in. At the end of the afternoon (when all sharp electrical appliances were safely stowed away) I raised a glass of tequila to Matthew Seligman of The Soft Boys. I just hope that I don't have to put up any more bee hotels because of this pandemic.

P1040124

If you're looking for a little project that can help your local wildlife, read Barry's blog here for details on how to make a simple bee hotel.

So that's been five weeks. Five long weeks. Feels more like five years to me. 

And if that's not a blatant link into one more David Bowie song then I don't know what is. (here)


Leave a comment

Comments

  • GORDON MCGOOCHAN:

    “Liza Jane” was the first recording to be released as a single by David Bowie, and credited to Davie Jones with the King-Bees.

    21 Apr 2020 11:23:00

  • Dilys:

    Thank you for making me laugh out loud, again, at today’s Corona diary. I hope the solitary bees will take advantage of the accommodation you have provided and enjoy a more social environment! Let us know what happens, please.

    21 Apr 2020 15:04:00

  • Fran Shall:

    Thanks for making me laugh – I have some half-made Bee B&Bs lying around and you’ve prompted me to finish them.

    22 Apr 2020 12:30:00

Time Δ Debug Message - Perch Runway 3.2
1783224195.30820 [906] SELECT p.pagePath, pr.routePattern, pr.routeRegExp, p.pageTemplate, pr.routeOrder, s.settingValue AS siteOffline FROM swt_pages_staging p LEFT JOIN swt_page_routes pr ON p.pageID=pr.pageID LEFT JOIN swt_settings s ON s.settingID='siteOffline' UNION SELECT NULL AS pagePath, pr2.routePattern, pr2.routeRegExp, pr2.templatePath AS pageTemplate, pr2.routeOrder, NULL AS siteOffline FROM swt_page_routes pr2 WHERE templateID!=0 ORDER BY routeOrder ASC, pagePath ASC
1783224195.33550.0273Matched route: news/[slug:s]
1783224195.33570.0002Server address: 216.73.217.177
1783224195.33570.0001Using master page: /templates/pages/blog/post.php
1783224195.33570Page arguments: 
Array
(
    [0] => /news/corona-wildlife-diary-day-thirty-five
    [s] => corona-wildlife-diary-day-thirty-five
    [1] => corona-wildlife-diary-day-thirty-five
)
1783224195.3360.0003 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1783224195.3370.001 [86] SELECT DISTINCT settingID, settingValue FROM swt_settings WHERE userID=0
1783224195.33880.0018 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_shop_cart WHERE cartID=22637783
1783224195.33950.0007 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_shop_cart WHERE cartID=22637783
1783224195.34030.0008 [nil] SELECT * FROM swt_shop_sales WHERE saleFrom<='2026-07-05 04:03:00' AND saleTo>'2026-07-05 04:03:00' AND saleActive=1 AND saleDeleted IS NULL ORDER BY saleOrder ASC
1783224195.34140.0012 [1] SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS DISTINCT tbl.* FROM ( SELECT idx.itemID, main.*, idx2.indexValue as sortval FROM swt_blog_index idx JOIN swt_blog_posts main ON idx.itemID=main.postID AND idx.itemKey='postID' JOIN swt_blog_index idx2 ON idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemKey='postID' AND idx2.indexKey='_id' WHERE 1=1 AND ((idx.indexKey='postSlug' AND idx.indexValue='corona-wildlife-diary-day-thirty-five')) AND idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemKey=idx2.itemKey GROUP BY idx.itemID, idx2.indexValue, postID ) as tbl WHERE (postStatus='Published' AND postDateTime<='2026-07-05 04:03:00' ) GROUP BY itemID, sortval ORDER BY sortval ASC LIMIT 0, 10
1783224195.34350.002 [1] SELECT FOUND_ROWS() AS `count`
1783224195.34410.0006 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_blog_posts WHERE postID=2088 AND postStatus='Published' AND postDateTime<='2026-07-05 04:03:00'
1783224195.34510.001 [13] SELECT * FROM swt_blog_sections ORDER BY sectionTitle ASC
1783224195.34580.0008 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_blogs ORDER BY blogTitle ASC
1783224195.34650.0007 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_categories WHERE catID=33 LIMIT 1
1783224195.34710.0006Using template: /templates/blog/post.html
1783224195.34730.0003 [162] SELECT catID, catPath FROM swt_categories
1783224195.34830.001 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_blog_posts WHERE postStatus='Published' AND postDateTime<='2026-07-05 04:03:00' AND postSlug='corona-wildlife-diary-day-thirty-five'
1783224195.36980.0215Using template: /templates/blog/post.html
1783224195.37050.0007 [250] SELECT country, countryID FROM swt_shop_countries WHERE countryActive=1 ORDER BY country ASC
1783224195.37220.0018Using template: /templates/pages/attributes/seo.html
1783224195.37260.0003 [1] SELECT regionID, regionTemplate, regionPage, regionRev AS rev FROM swt_content_regions WHERE regionKey='Banner image' AND (regionPage='/news/post' OR regionPage='*')
1783224195.37350.0009 [nil] SELECT * FROM ( SELECT idx.itemID, c.regionID, idx.pageID, c.itemJSON, idx2.indexValue as sortval FROM swt_content_index idx JOIN swt_content_items c ON idx.itemID=c.itemID AND idx.itemRev=c.itemRev AND idx.regionID=c.regionID JOIN swt_content_index idx2 ON idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemRev=idx2.itemRev AND idx2.indexKey='_order' WHERE ((idx.regionID=104 AND idx.itemRev=0)) AND idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemRev=idx2.itemRev ) as tbl GROUP BY itemID, pageID, itemJSON, sortval, regionID ORDER BY sortval ASC
1783224195.3750.0015 [82] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageNew=0 AND pageHidden=0 AND pageDepth >=0 AND pageDepth<=2 ORDER BY pageTreePosition ASC
1783224195.37820.0032 [1] SELECT pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1783224195.37880.0006 [2] SELECT pageID FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition IN ('000-006-001', '000-006', '000') ORDER BY pageTreePosition DESC
1783224195.38150.0027Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template.html
1783224195.38160.0001 [6] Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template_children.html
1783224195.38260.001 [4] Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template_children.html
1783224195.38310.0006 [29] Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template_children.html
1783224195.3860.0028 [10] Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template_children.html
1783224195.38720.0012 [7] Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template_children.html
1783224195.38790.0008 [9] Using template: /templates/navigation/ps_nav_template_children.html
1783224195.39080.0029 [1] SELECT pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' OR pageSortPath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1783224195.39190.0011 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageHidden=0 AND pageNew=0 AND pageTreePosition IN ('000-006-001', '000-006', '000') ORDER BY pageTreePosition
1783224195.39420.0023 [1] Using template: /templates/navigation/breadcrumbs.html
1783224195.39480.0006Using template: /templates/blog/post.html
1783224195.3950.0003 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_blog_authors WHERE authorID='3' LIMIT 1
1783224195.39580.0008Using template: /templates/blog/author.html
1783224195.39630.0004 [1] SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS DISTINCT tbl.* FROM ( SELECT idx.itemID, main.*, idx2.indexValue as sortval FROM swt_blog_index idx JOIN swt_blog_posts main ON idx.itemID=main.postID AND idx.itemKey='postID' JOIN swt_blog_index idx2 ON idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemKey='postID' AND idx2.indexKey='_id' WHERE 1=1 AND ((idx.indexKey='postSlug' AND idx.indexValue='corona-wildlife-diary-day-thirty-five')) AND idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemKey=idx2.itemKey GROUP BY idx.itemID, idx2.indexValue, postID ) as tbl WHERE (postStatus='Published' AND postDateTime<='2026-07-05 04:03:00' ) GROUP BY itemID, sortval ORDER BY sortval ASC LIMIT 0, 1
1783224195.39840.0022 [1] SELECT FOUND_ROWS() AS `count`
1783224195.39890.0005 [1] Using template: /templates/blog/post.html
1783224195.40160.0027Using template: /templates/blog/comment_form.html
1783224195.40260.001 [3] SELECT * FROM swt_blog_comments WHERE 1=1 AND postID=2088 AND commentStatus='LIVE' ORDER BY FIELD(webmentionType, 'like', 'repost', 'comment', NULL) ASC, commentDateTime ASC
1783224195.45670.0541 [3] Using template: /templates/blog/comment.html
1783224195.45760.0009Using template: /templates/blog/post.html
1783224195.45770.0002 [1] SELECT * FROM swt_blog_authors WHERE authorID='3' LIMIT 1
1783224195.45850.0008 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/what-we-do' OR pageSortPath='/what-we-do' LIMIT 1
1783224195.45920.0007 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition='000-002' LIMIT 1
1783224195.45980.0006 [7] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageNew=0 AND pageHidden=0 AND pageTreePosition LIKE '000-002%' AND pageDepth >=1 AND pageDepth<=2 ORDER BY pageTreePosition ASC
1783224195.46190.0022 [1] SELECT pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1783224195.46250.0005 [2] SELECT pageID FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition IN ('000-006-001', '000-006', '000') ORDER BY pageTreePosition DESC
1783224195.46440.002 [6] Using template: /templates/navigation/footer-nav.html
1783224195.46560.0012 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/make-a-difference' OR pageSortPath='/make-a-difference' LIMIT 1
1783224195.46620.0006 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition='000-005' LIMIT 1
1783224195.46660.0004 [38] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageNew=0 AND pageHidden=0 AND pageTreePosition LIKE '000-005%' ORDER BY pageTreePosition ASC
1783224195.46890.0024 [1] SELECT pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1783224195.46940.0005 [2] SELECT pageID FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition IN ('000-006-001', '000-006', '000') ORDER BY pageTreePosition DESC
1783224195.47140.002 [10] Using template: /templates/navigation/footer-nav.html
1783224195.47470.0033 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/visit' OR pageSortPath='/visit' LIMIT 1
1783224195.47540.0007 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition='000-004' LIMIT 1
1783224195.47590.0005 [30] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageNew=0 AND pageHidden=0 AND pageTreePosition LIKE '000-004%' AND pageDepth >=1 AND pageDepth<=2 ORDER BY pageTreePosition ASC
1783224195.47820.0024 [1] SELECT pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1783224195.47890.0006 [2] SELECT pageID FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition IN ('000-006-001', '000-006', '000') ORDER BY pageTreePosition DESC
1783224195.48090.002 [29] Using template: /templates/navigation/footer-nav.html
1783224195.48310.0022 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/make-a-difference' OR pageSortPath='/make-a-difference' LIMIT 1
1783224195.48380.0007 [1] SELECT pageID, pageParentID, pageDepth, pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition='000-005' LIMIT 1
1783224195.48430.0005 [11] SELECT * FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageNew=0 AND pageHidden=0 AND pageTreePosition LIKE '000-005%' AND pageDepth >=1 AND pageDepth<=2 ORDER BY pageTreePosition ASC
1783224195.48640.0021 [1] SELECT pageTreePosition FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pagePath='/news/post' LIMIT 1
1783224195.48690.0005 [2] SELECT pageID FROM swt_pages_staging WHERE pageTreePosition IN ('000-006-001', '000-006', '000') ORDER BY pageTreePosition DESC
1783224195.48880.0019 [10] Using template: /templates/navigation/footer-nav.html
1783224195.49050.0017Request time: 0.1835
1783224195.49050Process time: 0.1834
1783224195.49060Memory: 1.653