OOPS!!
Here are more pictures of my original site for Bee Orchids I have often posted pictures of but never in flower until now, lol.
It is fairly shaded for large period of the day so lighting for photography not always great!!
Also there are a series of pictures that I took around 8pm in the evening at this location and I think they will stand out too?! But the point of it all is to log photos of the Orchids at these locations to show how bad or how well they are doing!
I will also in time work out what it is that makes them tick and what encourages them to flourish or to not show up at all! But this is due to the fact that it is NOT just Orchids and the things that are OBVIOUSLY connected to them. No I will notice other things that many will overlook. For instance I noted many things other than Orchids that were doing quite well and realised there was a possible link to the plants and I will get to that at some point. I should have taken more pictures really but I had noted a fair few of these before my brain made the link from it to the Orchids.
Now I will point out that this site for Bee Orchids does not possess what I had noted at the other site!
I will now explain that THIS SITE is absolutely TINY! It is confined to an area from around 3 to 5 square metres!
The other site they are spread over several hundred metres and I still consider that other area to be small, this one is MINISCULE!! There was another patch of them nearby but they have not appeared since I have visited the site and they have not appeared this year but I will keep an eye out for them. I know the EXACT SPOT right down to the square foot they are in because wildlife photographers looking for Dragonflies and Damselflies explained that several years before they see several and pointed at the patch.
One chap on the Internet stated on his site that he had been there about 4 years prior to me finding it and he had seen a single solitary Bee Orchid! He obviously did not know about the other spot nearby and his main objective to being there may not have been the Orchids anyway?!
As for me I have had a real pleasurable time doing this, this year and am over the moon with joy at seeing all these and in good numbers too, even if not the 10,000 Bee Orchids they stated and if they stated there was just a thousand I would ask them what drugs they are on!
This site I would say that they amount to 50 but in close quarters to each other. The site much further away could harbour a couple of hundred and I did a thorough search and I would say I spotted way over 60 plants and I would guess around 80 give or take a couple.
One area had around 40 plus alone on one side of a path I did not expect to see them?! I bumped into a poor soul who himself was passionate about Orchids but was a hay-fever sufferer and had a mask on?! He said he had seen about 50 and he was unaware of the parts I was first seeing them where I had seen over a couple of dozen at least.