Eye on Nature: Your notes and queries for Ethna Viney

Can you identify the bee in the photograph I’m sending you?

Alan Jones, Greystones, Co Wicklow

It is the patchwork leafcutter bee,

Megachile centuncularis

, noted for building nests from pieces of green leaf to make cells for her larvae. Its orange undercarriage is a pollen brush. This solitary insect makes its nest in various types of cavity – wood, old walls and so on.

My daughter pointed out a huge swarm of strange, clumsy-looking flies coming out of a hole in the ground from which ants usually come.

Ciarán Ó Cuinneagáin, Galway

The insects are winged ants, males and virgin queens, emerging for their nuptial flight, when they mate high up in the sky. These flights require warm weather with little wind or rain, and are synchronised with the flights of neighbouring colonies to enable cross-breeding. The fertilised queens return, shed their wings and set up new colonies. They mate only once and may live for 20 years.

On a grassed area near Gortmore Harbour, on Lough Derg, I found an orchid that I’d like to know more about.

Eoghan Ganly, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin

It is the pyramidal orchid, from looking at your photograph. It is quite common in Ireland, in calcareous grassland, on roadside edges and sometimes on dunes and in gravel pits.

Near my home I found a common spotted orchid 90cm tall by my measuring tape.

Eckhard Schmidt, Milford, Co Donegal

It is a whopper. The books say 50-70cm.

Meic Haines, a reader from Wales on a visit to Dublin, sent a photograph of a heron, unfazed by the traffic, on the River Camac at Bow Bridge in Dublin.

Ethna Viney welcomes observations and photographs at Thallabawn, Louisburgh, Co Mayo, F28 F978, or by email at viney@anu.ie. Please include a postal address