Ongar Ploughing Match, Plus Ivy Visitors 23

I drove the single-track roads in my yellow Honda S2000 to Roxwell near Chelmsford for the Ongar Ploughing Match. I've been to events like this in the past in my blue S2K where 'Chelsea tractors' have been bogged down in mud and I have remained mobile. No mud today but a severely rutted entrance into a field of bean stubble. I negotiated it gingerly without incident.

It was lovely chatting in the sunshine, in shirtsleeves, to 'farmer boys' and meeting beautifully trained working dogs. Such a shame I couldn't bring Mishka. My aim was to photograph a tractor of my age. I shared banter with some amiable blokes who had brought a 1939 Fordson. I'm not that old! :) I noticed a Little Grey Fergie, as a young lad with a tape measure was assisting the driver. It was manufactured in 1951, the year of my birth and that of the driver's father. Yay! :)

Top of the ivy league today, (in Extras), the central image, is a cluster fly, possibly Pollenia rudis. I've been noticing these as they're fairly sluggish and have fluff on their thoraxes which looks nothing in poor light but is beautifully golden in the sunshine. They are parasites of earthworms.

Other subjects are a male face fly, so called because they settle on the faces of cattle and horses. Appropriate that they have the scientific name Musca autumnalis as it's the first day of autumn. I've included an image of the sun rising over our glasshouses at the start of the new season. Two snails. Loved how the smaller one was nestled in the middle of an ivy umbel.

Another Tachinid I think and a solitary bee. I seem to be developing a fascination with insects' bottoms. The 'pointed bottom fly' is some sort of blow fly and the black and white one a flesh fly.