The Manx Wildlife Trust is the island’s leading nature conservation charity. We are a major force in protecting and promoting wildlife and wild places in the Isle of Man.

We keep a close eye on trends in wildlife populations and own 24 nature reserves around the island.

However the Trust has a small staff which makes it hard for us to monitor all the island, so this is why we are asking you to help by becoming our eyes and ears on the ground and around the sea to help us to keep track of what is happening to our wildlife.

Why not join in and become a citizen scientist?

It’s not difficult, we are asking you to send in sightings of wildlife, email or Facebook message us with the date, location, contact details and what you have seen.

If you can, take some photographs from as many different aspects as possible as this helps us to verify the species.

We have had lots of reports during the unseasonably warm weather of the emergence of butterflies, and many of you have reported in sightings of frogspawn in your garden ponds.

The earliest sighting we have had of frogspawn was from Annie Curtis in Ballasalla on February 8.

This month we would love to know about the queen bumblebees which are emerging from hibernation after spending the winter hidden in soil.

The buff tailed bumble bee is one of the first to emerge with the queen looking for a nesting site.

She needs to find nectar and pollen as soon as she can so she can establish a colony of bees.

This bumblebee has a short tongue so it favours foraging for pollen in short open flowering plants like comfrey, lavender and a wide range of crop plants.

The queen buff-tailed bumblebee is a large bee at 20mm in length and has a ’buff’ banded tip to the tail.

Watch out for the early bumblebee too, which is one of our prettiest and smallest bumble bees measuring in at 16mm to 18mm long.

The early bumblebee has a bright orange tail and lemon-yellow bands on its body.

It is very common and can be found in all kinds of habitats in early spring.

Another early bumblebee is the tree bumblebee.

It nests in cavities, such as old birds’ nests, bird boxes, or roof spaces.

This bee visits a wide range of flowers, particularly those of soft fruits, such as raspberries and blackberries.

The tree bumblebee has fuzzy, browny-orange hairs on its thorax, a black abdomen, and a white tail and is between 13mm and17mm long (see picture above.)

So get buzzing and help us to find our bumblebees!

by Dawn Dickens

Biodiversity Education Officer