Pellucid

I walked up the hill before lunch, and was photographing a stretch of verge full of large white daisies, probably planted by the owner of the garden behind the trees; the fly posed on several of them for long enough to be in focus. It's a Pellucid Fly (Volucella Pellucens), and is one of the largest hoverflies in the UK, but still small enough for a Tuesday I think. There's a delicate little field bindweed flower in the extras too. 

It was the sunniest part of the day, which has mostly been overcast and oppressively humid. The harvest is continuing all around us; I enjoyed the views across the valley to the patterns being cut in the large field in the extra, but was less happy about the clouds of dust in the lane from the tractor mowing the adjacent meadow. The dominant colours of the landscape are now dry, late summer yellow-browns, with flashes of pink and gold in the hedgerows and dusty dark green trees. I walked a little way into the dark, leafy green shade of the woods on a track dotted with fallen leaves, yellow, green and brown. Summer was slow to arrive, and is already, in early August, starting to feel autumnal.