35
SPRING 1990
Spring 1990 has been notable for its excellent
weather with day after day of hot, sunny
weather which has made fieldwork a rather
pleasurable experience. Around Bluebell time
I visited Apes Grove at Abridge, a fine,
coppiced woodland with mainly Hornbeam stools
and Ash standards, some of the latter being
very large trees: a few dak standards and
Maple stools were also seen. The most
eye-catching plants were Bluebells, in their
thousands, along with a few patches of Dog's
Mercury. I also noted a single Wild Service
tree in the wood. Entomologically I didn't
see much of note: a single male Orange Tip
butterfly and a single specimen of the long-
tongued bee—fly Bombylius major.
I saw my first Swallow and House Martin over
Leyton Flats on the 2nd of May, followed a
little later on the same day, on Wanstead
Flats, by a Wheatear on passage. The bird was
seen in the patch of Broom 'scrub' between
Lakehouse Road and Centre Road. On the 5th
May I saw my first Swift of the year, again
over Wanstead Flats. On the 19th May I was
one of a group of about fifteen Field Club
members (older and younger!) who attended the
visit to Geoff Mills' apiary at Danbury
organised by John Dobson. Safely behind a
'net' tent our group was shown the workings of
a beehive and by good luck we managed to see
the queen bee herself, much larger than the
worker bees and with an elongated abdomen. We
were shown among other things pieces of comb
drawn into fine-walled cells in which the bees