Prepared

I'd been so sure that this would be bee-fly day: it's late enough now, and it was warm enough - this morning, at least, before the wind got into its stride again. But bee-flies were there none. On the other hand, the wild garden, which is where I usually find them first, is half submerged under pools of standing water. So maybe they've all drowned. I'm only partly joking about this, because I found a dead male solitary bee today, lying in a puddle of water in the secret garden, as well as a a couple more that looked as though they'd be lucky to make it through to the emergence of their female counterparts - so I'm not alone in needing things to warm up and dry out.

Luckily the Hairy-footed Flower Bees are still going strong, with some new males appearing today to join the existing crew in their relentless patrol of the front garden. I've posted so many plumpies recently that (much as I love them) I'm feeling the need now to look for new angles on the subject - and today, this is it. I'd be lying if I claimed that it was anything other than a lucky capture, but as other people* have observed before me, the more you practise, the luckier you get - and I believe I can claim to have put in enough hours photographing flying things to deserve a little luck every now and then.

* My Dad, who was a keen golfer, always said that this phrase was coined by Gary Player, but Gary Player attributed it to Arnold Palmer, and he said it came originally from some other golfer I'd never heard of. My guess is that it was probably a common saying among American sports coaches, but only became well-known among civilians when a few famous sportsmen repeated it in public.