blame it on the weather

...I would love to have blipped something rare, or pretty, or simply not a fly!

Unfortunately, the weather was as bad and, at times, worse, than it was yesterday. On the flip-side, the extremely heavy hail showers were balanced by a few periods of brightness. It was in one of those bright spells that I slipped out to our local nature reserve in the hope of finding something interesting. With the next blanket of heavy black cloud rapidly approaching, the only sign of life (thanks to the output of the horses that graze the reserve) were the many common yellow dung flies, Scathophaga stercoraria, which seem fairly impervious to the rubbish weather. Not much left in flower apart from the wild carrot that is prolific here.

The adults of these flies are predatory on other flies and, although they will eat some pollen as part of their diet, this one is not feeding on the carrot but waiting for dinner to fly by...