Daddy Longlegs And The Long Jump

Not much time for photography today. I shot this male crane fly, mainly as I wanted to capture the lovely red, but poisonous, berries of black bryony behind it. I like the way one of the fly's halteres, small knobbed modified hind wings, show up against the berry. These structures help the insect to fly better by vibrating in flight. I had learnt about these in biology at school but was fascinated when we went to Greece to see halteres in a museum. Ancient Greek halteres are dumbells used for lifting and carried by athletes doing the long jump. They were swung and increased the length an athlete was able to jump.