Leaf-cutter bees have been coming into gardens and making holes in the leaves of the rose bushes. They are small, hairy brown bees, and on her underside the female has a patch of orange hairs that pick up pollen when she is visiting flowers. When she is on the leaves, she uses her jaws to cut out neat circular or semicircular segments, and she builds her nest with these.

The nest is usually made in a tunnel in decaying wood or in the compost in a flower pot, or it may be in a hollow plant stem. The female makes a cylindrical cell with a leaf segment for each egg she lays, and stocks it with nectar and pollen before closing it top and bottom with other bits of leaf. She may make a tower of these cells. The new bees emerge the following summer.

After a dearth of large, colourful butterflies in the August rains, a few red admirals are appearing where there is some September sunshine, and nectaring on the later flowers of the buddleia bushes.