Greenbottle

My apologies for this - I'm sure some of you are going "Eeeeeuurrrgghhh!", and I can't say I blame you. I'm not a lover of flies myself. But I did like the colour, and I thought the mouth parts were fascinating - I never knew flies had hairy tongues.

(Those of us who indulge in the juice of the vine, and who in our youths might possibly occasionally have overindulged, can probably all agree that we know what a hairy tongue feels like. I'm happy to say that I no longer go in for hangovers.)

The extra is a marmalade hoverfly. Both of them were eating something - honeydew, possibly? - from the surface of a tayberry leaf. Every now and then they had to move out of the way when a wasp arrived for a snack, but largely speaking everyone was managing to coexist without aggravation.

There are several species of greenbottle fly, but from the number of bristles I think this one might be Lucilia caesar. Adults are known to eat nectar, but the larvae eat carrion and dung. If you're not already completely repulsed, there's some more information here.