Vibrant

Did I say vibrant? Sorry - I meant vibrating.

The weather has definitely turned. It was cloudy and cold for much of the day, with a biting, gusty wind. From time to time we had brief and unexpected bursts of warm sunshine, but they were offset by rain showers - mostly brief as well, but always unpleasant, as the cold drizzle swirled around on the blustery wind. You'd almost think that this was England, in April.

Because of the weather there weren't many invertebrates around to occupy me, and it didn't seem fair to go beating them out of their shelters when it could easily freeze overnight. Needless to say, this put me in a Bit of a Mood, so I did aggressive gardening, laying waste to the brambles and self-seeded tree saplings along the border between the 'cultivated' and wild gardens, until - three large barrow-loads later - I was feeling a little more at peace with the world.

The sunny periods I mentioned did bring out a few insects, though they only stayed out for as long as the sun did. This is a female Epistrophe eligans, which is one of the prettiest of the early hoverflies, I think, with that gleaming brassy thorax. In the kind of warm weather we've had recently the males will hang out in a group, watching each other while looking out for females, but also investigating anything else (such as a photographer) that wanders into their territory. I've sometimes felt myself to be the object of intense scrutiny as several E. eligans males have hovered around my head, swooping at each other and swapping positions every few seconds like a syrphid tag team. It's mildly amusing to try to photograph them doing this, though also quite frustrating, because they tend to zoom out of the way when the 'eye' of the camera turns directly towards them.

There was no zooming going on today though - it was far too cold. This female appeared during a sunny spell and landed on the shrubby honeysuckle to bask, but almost immediately the wind got up and the cloud rolled over, leaving her exposed as the temperature plummeted. Her response was to vibrate her thoracic muscles to warm them up to flight temperature, and this shivering produced the wing movement you can see here.