Image details

Pile of small sticks and dried leaves arranged by a Two-coloured mason bee (Osmia bicolor) to camouflage her nest in a Brown-lipped snail (Cepaeae nemoralis) shell on a chalk grassland slope, Bath and northeast Somerset, UK, May. The bee provisions the snail shell with chewed balls of pollen and nectar, seals it with a layer of debris and masticated leaves and covers it with a stack of dried leaves and sticks.