Lazy wood fly

R and I were busy for quite a lot of today, not least in going out for lunch to celebrate our 34th wedding anniversary, so I didn't find much time for photography. The weather was also unhelpfully overcast and windy for most of the day, though there were a few bright spells.

The stand-out garden inverts of the day were a lesser thorn-tipped longhorn beetle that I found sunbathing on the nettle bed in the wild garden (the first of its kind I've simply spotted going about its own concerns, rather than sweeping or beating it from a roost); and a big fat Angle Shades moth, quite recently emerged I think, which fluttered grumpily up from the depths of a clump of yarrow as I was walking past it, and hung itself from the upper leaves. Sadly I didn't get good photos of either: the beetle was tiny, and the nettle on which it was resting was blowing wildly back and forth, and the moth positioned itself (annoyingly) with its rather ugly pink belly towards the light and its handsome wings in shade. And yes, I do know, thanks, that moths don't have bellies - but if you saw my record shots, you'd understand why that's a better description than 'ventral surface'.

Luckily this handsome Xylota segnis was better placed for photos, in good light on top of one of my peonies, and he was also quite cooperative, which isn't always the case. Wikipedia roughly translates his binomial name as the lazy wood fly, segnis meaning slow or sluggish, and xylota meaning wooden; but though it's true that this is primarily a woodland species, whose larvae commonly develop in rotting wood, I'd take issue with the notion that it's lazy. The justification seems to be that Xylota segnis specimens spend more time at rest, on leaves or logs, than in the air, but in my experience they're fast, skittish, and easily put to flight, and even when they are down on leaves they tend to be rushing hither and yon, grazing honeydew or fallen pollen from their surfaces. It's this grazing activity that gives the species its Continental common name of orange-belted leafwalker, and its 'Falk' name of orange-belted leaf licker.