Believe it or not we've had a mostly sunny day today, with no sign of rain. A few dark clouds threatened, but nothing came if it (for once). It won't last, but it gave our local bee population the excuse to come and raid the lavender. Most looked in fine shape but one laggard was clearly a little less fit than the others and suffered a minor plummet to ground level. The odds are that it was exhausted and cold. Time to feed it up with a solution of 1 part sugar to 20 parts water.
It took a while, but eventually it started to feed. 
I'm not sure how well our treatment worked. The bee did start to scuttle around in a more lively fashion, and eventually it tried to scale the wall back up to the flower bed.. It fell off once, so we picked it up on a lavender stem and placed it at the top of the raised bed. Later we spotted it settled on a leaf, but still seemingly unable to fly. By tonight it was gone.
Another garden visitor enjoying the dry weather was the young vixen, Poppy. 
Camera note: foxes and the first bee shot taken with the Canon 7D and EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM. The macros of the bee were taken with the EF 100mm f/2.8L macro IS USM lens and the internal flash.
derWandersmann
16 Jul 2012Wonderful macros! It's hard for us to envision a creature with no speck of ego inside it somewhere, so we do things like feeding bees and helping ants out of trouble. Maybe something, somewhere, notices , something I am loth to put a name to … well, it makes us feel better, whether the bees give a tinker's damn or not.
Poppy has a pretty face, as is the wont of young ladies, but she's been rooting about in something that left her nose dirty.
gdare
16 Jul 2012Macro photos today? (including the fox)
😀
anonymous
16 Jul 2012Anonymous writes:
Beautiful pictures of Poppy! She is sweet-faced with soft eyes! I like the bee shots too.
Marilyn
anonymous
17 Jul 2012Anonymous writes:
She really does look sweet, doesn't she 🙂 ~alice
Words
17 Jul 2012Darko, the fox was taken with a 200mm telephoto lens. The bee was taken from about 12 inches away with a macro…. as close as I could get.
Words
17 Jul 2012dW, rescuing bees seems to be a theme. As I arrived at work someone dashed out of a building saying that had a wasp on their back. Turned out to be a bee so I carefully coaxed it onto a piece of cloth and placed it safely on the ground.
Words
17 Jul 2012Marilyn, thanks! Poppy is very cute.
Words
17 Jul 2012Alice, thanks!
SittingFox
18 Jul 2012It has been a tough year for invertebrates.
Excellent portraits!
derWandersmann
18 Jul 2012Vertebrates, too, Adele.
Words
19 Jul 2012Adele, thanks! And yes insects have really suffered, and no doubt the birds as well as a result.
Words
19 Jul 2012dW, so true!
pierreange
19 Jul 2012Beautiful pict of " goupil " !
Words
19 Jul 2012Merci Pierre!
derWandersmann
19 Jul 2012"Goupil" … set off a string of memories … The Goupil Gallery, where van Gogh went all broody, and somehow connects with l' Art Nouveau, too. I've gotta go looking stuff up now …