Friday 11 April 2014

The emergence of the hoverflies

You have to love spring - everything starts to wake up again, the plants are starting to grow, hedges are starting to leaf, blackthorn is in full flower and insects and other invertebrates are emerging! hundreds of them this week in my garden! I had to get ID confirmation, but now I know these are a species of Eristalis hoverflies also called drone flies as they look very similar to a honey bee drone.

eristalis sp. hoverflies

eristalis sp. hoverflies

eristalis sp. hoverflies

eristalis sp. hoverflies


The Eristalis have a wing vein with a very distinctive loop which you can see in this photo

eristalis sp. hoverfly


My garden also has many spiders you can see them all dart for cover when you get too close, but these Nursery web spiders don't seem so keen to hide so I managed to photograph several of them!

Nursery Web Spider

Nursery Web Spider

Nursery Web Spider

Nursery Web Spider


and when I was photographing the spiders I also spotted this pretty little woundwort shieldbug

woundwort shieldbug

photography by Angela Smith

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