CleanSteve

By CleanSteve

A forager on the cherry blossom

Back to the cemetery in the late afternoon. While watching for the bees on the cherry blossom I noticed multiple types of insects all clambering around their white flowers. 

When the bees landed on a flower on a couple of the trees their movement would cause the white petals to fall like confetti leaving a thin carpet on the mown grass beneath.

I have no idea wehat thias ionsect is. 'Stevvi' suggests it is a hoverfly. He may be right.

At one point I noticed an insect with a long proboscis like a 'hummingbird', which hovered in midair before choosing a flower to home in on. That was a hoverfly. They appeared to hover with their wings outstretched and their proboscis deep within the flower's heart, sometimes for minutes on end. I tried to photograph them in flight but was a bit disappointed with the results, so will aim to try again on another day. A couple of trees have blossom appearing much later in thew cycle, which I hope will allow the insects to feed for a few more days. 

I found out later that the subject with the long proboscis was probably a male bee fly (Bombylius major) hovering on the lookout for females.

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