Strange looking bumblebees and some sort of Pentatomidae

I found this strange looking bumblebee as well as a some sort of pentatomidae that I have never seen before. If you happen to know the names of them, please tell me in a comment below!

As expected, a note on Facebook and now I know thanks to my good friend and one of the real experts in the area of beetles, Bengt Andersson! It is Trichius fasciatus and it is not a bumblebee but a beetle. In Swedish it is, however, called a bumblebee beetle!

This is, I have been told, a "dock bug" or Coreus marginatus.

Drama in the Field !

The Field is an important part of what I consider to be the core of Svångemåla. That is where cranes, moose, deer and many other animals live and thrive. It is also an important agricultural piece of land where my neighbor farmer collect hay and, some time ago let his cows graze. It is, though, a dangerous place since it is an old sea bed and the soil is very slippery when wet. Two gentlement got first hand experience of that the other day when first a 4x4 with a small trailer got stuck and when they tried to use a 4x4 tractor to pull it out, it also got stuck!

I guess the driver had a "sinking feeling" !

The smell of this kind of soil is not for sensitive noses.

The problem was easily solved by a large forest machine that pulled out the tractor like it was a toy.

We got a new gate!!

After the wild pigs forced me to put up an electric fence around the plot, we have had to use long removable springs to connect the wires where our entrance is. Not only has it been a bit cumbersome to do that but it has also not looked good so a proper gate has been on the wish list for a while. When I got a bit of help from a good friend we started the job by digging a small ditch in which we buried a small plastic hose in which the wires could run. 

 The second task was to dig a relatively deep hole in which the pole for the gate could stand. It was not easy since there are so many stones where ever you try to dig in Svångemåla. 

We used three bags of cement to stabilize the pole.

To make sure that the pole stood absolutely vertical we used a bubble level and spent some time stabalizing the pole after we had filled up the hole with cement.

Although it is a very simple gate, it put a lot of strain on the pole so we anchored it to a big stone.

The gate itself is made of treated wood that will last for at least 20 years. It is only a simple frame with a cross beam to make sure that it does not lose its shape after a while.

The latch is made of a piece of wood that I got from a tree I had to take down. It is shaped as a Y and can be lifted up and down thanks to a hinge. Simple, appropriate and sustainable technology :)



The end result as seen when leaving the plot. I have not cut the poles yet since I am not sure if I might want to build some sort of arch over the gate.