Merlin’s Hollow, Busy Bee World Under The Microscope

I almost forgot that I had all these nice pictures of bugs I took at the Merlin’s Hollow English garden visit at the beginning of this month. Not sure if I said that before but Merlin’s Hollow garden is always full of surprises and this year I entered another dimension – the macro world.


I remember those days when all the birds I saw around me always look the same, but not until I got birding book, camera and photo lens. Now I can say the same about the insects. At some point they all used to look the same especially bees and flies. Well it isn’t the case anymore and I shall put that blame on my macro lens.

So here I am standing and bending and taking photos but I couldn’t help to listen to the conversation, okay I was kind of eavesdropping, but I was there and wasn’t hiding – may be it does not count. The conversation was between a visiting lady and David Tomlinson.


I am not sure who it was, may be she was talking about her son. She was little disappointed that, let say it was her son she was talking about, after graduating from university wants to be a farmer. Okay at that point I did not have any particular subject to photograph in front of me so I turned around and said: ‘Trust me after graduating from university we all want to be farmers‘.

‘Why, did you go to university?‘ – she asked. ‘Yes, many years ago and why – because it is very stressful, and it does not get any better because some of the jobs become very demanding‘. And then Mr. Tomlinson added ‘or go to university to get a job to support your farm‘. ‘Exactly‘ – I nodded.


Speaking of farming let me bring to your attention my latest finding about this open source ecology project. You can watch the video here and find out more about the open source ecology project started by Marchin Jakubowski. However, this is the closest example of putting your degree into a good use – farming.


About 10,000 bird species – not sure if there is that one person in the world who was able to see them all. The last bird book I read the author had record of over 3,000 bird species. Now imagine insects, there are millions and millions of them and I am sure millions of them not identified yet.


So when I was shooting bug photo Mr. Tomlinson asked me what I was pointing at. So I showed him and he said he would love to identify all the insects in his garden. ‘But there are so many of them, just searching for name can be a full time job‘. Okay I should have known better. He pointed out that ‘if you are looking at the fly you would go to the fly section and so you are looking at the smaller population of insects‘.

Yes he is right, starting with the sub-categories will get you to ID the insect faster, but I will hold off on the identification idea of the bugs for now – just too many, too many to handle for now.


It was time to go. On my way out I was still taking last photos and at the same time I yelled to my husband – ‘this should be bug garden as well, there are so many of them here‘. A lady on the other side of the flower bed got excited and called back at me – ‘this is called a bug garden?‘. ‘No no this is English garden‘ – I replied. ‘Oh okay‘ – she replied bowing her head and I smiled back.

May be next time I will keep quite otherwise I will start a rumor that never existed.