Bee-fly day

The spring is sprung,
The grass is ris',
I wonder where the bee-flies is...?

Oh. There you are. About time too.

Actually, this is exactly the same date as last year for my first sighting of a Dark-edged Bee-fly - but it feels late, because I've been seeing photos of both these and the rarer Dotted Bee-fly on the Soldierflies and Allies Facebook page for a couple of weeks now. Anyway, today I found two male Bombylius major, one in each of the 100m recording squares that meet half-way along our garden, and there's a photo of each of them here.

The main image is the first of the 480 photos I took today, and the extra is one of the last. The second image also accounts for a high proportion of the 480 shots, because a feeding bee-fly is an annoyingly three dimensional little beast, not to mention skittish, and I spent quite a few minutes trailing around the secret garden after this one, shooting on burst while trying to get as much of it in focus as possible. The fact that Celandine is so reflective didn't help my quest for a decent image either, but I've chosen to take the blown highlights as a fact of life, rather than trying to colour them in recover them in Photoshop.

There were quite a few mining bees out in the garden today, of various types though again mainly males, and I've posted a few portraits to my Facebook page if you're interested. I'm tentative about the one I've suggested is Andrena chrysosceles, though that's what it looks most like, but I'm pretty sure my other identifications are sound.