This year I have a bee hotel attached to the house which provides somewhere for solitary bees to nest. The most commonly seen garden solitary bee is the red mason bee (Osmia bicornis) which finds cavities, such as in walls…
Bumblebees in Sandy, 2012
Following on from my other enthralling posts about grasshoppers and bush-crickets, here is one about bumblebees. I always used to think there were two sorts of bee: honey bees and bumblebees. I later thought there are two sorts of bumblebee:…
Bush-crickets in Sandy, 2012
Following on from my write-up of grasshoppers I’ve seen in Sandy, I would like to do the same for their close-relatives, bush-crickets. Bush-crickets are also orthoptera, but I find them more interesting. They are generally shorter but more bulky, larger,…
Grasshoppers in Sandy, 2012
I don’t recall as a child ever seeing a grasshopper or cricket except for some locusts in the school science lab. Like most nature I assumed I didn’t live in the right place, or that these things were too scarce,…
General Election prediction
Following my highly acclaimed* and wildly popular** predictions of Eurovision results, I offer my l33t sybilline skilz to the 2010 General Election tomorrow. All free of charge***: The Conservatives will scrape a majority. This is based on the principles that…
General Election candidates in North East Bedfordshire
The five candidates so far for the North East constituency are the following. So far no Greens or independents that I know of: Alistair Burt (Conservative), the sitting MP since 2001: Website: http://www.alistair-burt.co.uk/ Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alistair_Burt Lives: Wootton, Bedfordshire (in Mid Bedfordshire…
New ECML flyover at Hitchin
The BBC mentions that Network Rail are finally looking at putting in a flyover across the East Coast Main Line at Hitchin so trains to Cambridge will no longer have to cross three tracks, including the express lines. Cool…
What do you call someone from Sandy?
@ostephens on Twitter asked an interesting question: How do you know the correct form for changing a place name to an indicator of it’s denziens? Eg London -> Londoner, Bolton -> Boltonian I did manage to find some helpful-looking articles…
Corruption in Bedfordshire elections?
I don’t think the Bedfordshire on Sunday quite meant what they wrote when they published the following paragraph about the upcoming Central Bedfordshire local elections (my emphasis): The runners and riders for June 4 Central Bedfordshire Council elections have been…
Bedfordshire as ceremonial county
I now live in a purely ceremonial county now that Bedfordshire County Council no longer exists. I can’t say I’m particularly sad to see it go as the good services seemed to come from Mid Bedfordshire District Council and the…