Friendly Robin, nesting blue tit and interesting Insects

Our #DailyExercise walks through a local park and two cemeteries continue. Yesterday we met this beautiful robin

and we watched this blue tit going back and forth to a hole in a tree where it obviously has a nest - one time it was going in with a large clump of either nesting material or food in its beak (click on the photo for a closer view!)

This male chaffinch was very bold

The sunshine brought out a lot of insects, including this peacock butterfly, which seemed to be somewhat the worse for wear and also smaller than normal (possibly it didn't get enough food as a caterpillar and so couldn't grow to full size?)

and over the last couple of days we've seen a lot of hoverflies including this Syrphus sp

There are hundreds of species of hoverfly and once you start to look closely you realise just how many differnt species there may be in one small area. If you have a garden, look out and see how many species you can see! So far in the two cemeteries we've seen at least five species, probably more (some species are very similar and hard to tell apart and many are so small it's very difficult to identify them). Hoverflies are harmless insects, they don't bite or sting, but they mimic insects such as bees as wasps.
 
There are loads of dandelions in the cemeteries, which are great for insects. Some of them have already started seeding

 

There's a beautiful cherry tree in one of the cemeteries, which is lovely just now

and the cherry blossoms on our street are also at their best at the moment

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The UK Government is, at the moment, allowing us out for one form of #DailyExercise once a day in addition to visiting the shops (as infrequently as possible), travelling to work (for those with essential jobs that can't be done from home) and medical emergencies including helping those who are self isolating.