Myathropa

It's been a day when I've been busy but seem to have achieved little. A significant part of the day has been spent ferrying other people around; Pete was leading a Terrestrial Bug workshop for the Wildlife Trust at Ring Haw and Alex was accompanying a group taking a Froglife boat tour along the Nene. Unfortunately on the way back from dropping him at Ferry Meadows, on a section of the parkway that's in the process of being resurfaced and is currently very rough with much loose debris, my car windscreen was hit by two stones  - the second one cracked it, so it now has to be replaced.


I had hoped to find some time for a photographic walk, but in the end I only managed to take a few shots of the insects feeding on the knapweed growing near the kitchen door. This is an image of one of my favourite hoverflies, Myathropa florea, which is quite a large species and is easily recognised by the greyish pattern on its thorax, that some people liken to a skull.


Steve Falk, joint author and illustrator of the standard identification text 'British Hoverflies' describes it as follows:
'This is a common species, especially in woodland, but often turning up well away from woodland which suggests a strongly mobile nature. The rat-tailed larvae typically develop in tree rot holes and other crevices in trees that become filled with water and wet detritus but have apparently also been reared from wet cow dung and compost heaps. It flies from April to early autumn and the earliest individuals can be found visiting blossoms like Blackthorn and Cherry, whilst summer generations favour umbellifer and bramble flowers. Males hover at a height of 2-4 metres in sunbeams, often deep within woodland and not conspicuously in the open like Eristalis pertinax and E.intricarius.'