While waiting to finish off some work at College late on in the morning I walked over to the very small wildlife pond behind the Elgar building. This tiny pond was built only a few metres from a bend in the River Bourne in a quiet and sheltered spot behind one of the College teaching blocks. Its often good for animal activity in the pond and a nice mixture of flowers and insects around it, especially if you stand quietly and wait for the insects to appear around you.
The first species seen was a quite common hover-fly, but that I've not seen before, Helophilus pendulus. I'm not too surprised to find it next to a shallow pond as the larva is a "rat-tailed" maggot that lives in water and feeds off decaying vegetation. I have seen another, more local, species, Helophilus hybridus, in the woodland in Dene Park where there are some very suitable looking stagnant ponds! All members of the genus have these characteristic yellow-striped "waistcoats" on their thoraxes.
Next along was the adult stage of a very common hover-fly, Eristalis pertinax, which is another species with a rat-tailed maggot larva, that develops in rich, often polluted, waters. The adults are far more dainty feeders in comparison, visiting flowers such as umbellifers for pollen and nectar.
And this I rather think is the somewhat less common Eristalis horticola which has got a dumpier shape and slightly brighter patches on the top of its abdomen than E. pertenax.
and here is the rather frightening Tachinid fly, Tachina vera, covered in the vicious-looking spines characteristic of the group, nowhere near as attractive as the colourful hover-flies or Syrphidae.
All the time bees of different sorts were buzzing in and out of the flowers, burying themselves up to the neck and more, in the hooded labiate flowers - this individual is very faded due to age, so is a bit difficult to identify:
and small sawflies searched insatiably for suitable plant hosts to lay their eggs in (I think this is Arge ochropus, one of the "rose" sawflies known to horticulturist (there seems to be a glut of rather similar sawflies around at the moment, for example on the strawberry fields post published just previously:
Eventually a large brown field cricket revealed its presence, creeping out from the undergrowth.
and the tiny hover-fly Syritta pipiens, with its massively inflated hind femurs, attached itself to one ray of a small hawk-bit flowerhead
while Green Veined White Butterflies, Pieris napi, flew past and, very occasionally, settled long enough to have their photographs taken while taking nectar from the mint flowers:
A Beautiful Demoiselle, Calopteryx virgo, fluttered across the pond and settled behind some vegetation, so I was unable to get a decent photograph,
and finally, as I turned to leave, a male common darter dragonfly Sympetrum striolatum appeared, hovering over the pond, and finally settling to rest on a head of mint flowers:
The first species seen was a quite common hover-fly, but that I've not seen before, Helophilus pendulus. I'm not too surprised to find it next to a shallow pond as the larva is a "rat-tailed" maggot that lives in water and feeds off decaying vegetation. I have seen another, more local, species, Helophilus hybridus, in the woodland in Dene Park where there are some very suitable looking stagnant ponds! All members of the genus have these characteristic yellow-striped "waistcoats" on their thoraxes.
Next along was the adult stage of a very common hover-fly, Eristalis pertinax, which is another species with a rat-tailed maggot larva, that develops in rich, often polluted, waters. The adults are far more dainty feeders in comparison, visiting flowers such as umbellifers for pollen and nectar.
And this I rather think is the somewhat less common Eristalis horticola which has got a dumpier shape and slightly brighter patches on the top of its abdomen than E. pertenax.
and here is the rather frightening Tachinid fly, Tachina vera, covered in the vicious-looking spines characteristic of the group, nowhere near as attractive as the colourful hover-flies or Syrphidae.
All the time bees of different sorts were buzzing in and out of the flowers, burying themselves up to the neck and more, in the hooded labiate flowers - this individual is very faded due to age, so is a bit difficult to identify:
and small sawflies searched insatiably for suitable plant hosts to lay their eggs in (I think this is Arge ochropus, one of the "rose" sawflies known to horticulturist (there seems to be a glut of rather similar sawflies around at the moment, for example on the strawberry fields post published just previously:
Eventually a large brown field cricket revealed its presence, creeping out from the undergrowth.
and the tiny hover-fly Syritta pipiens, with its massively inflated hind femurs, attached itself to one ray of a small hawk-bit flowerhead
while Green Veined White Butterflies, Pieris napi, flew past and, very occasionally, settled long enough to have their photographs taken while taking nectar from the mint flowers:
A Beautiful Demoiselle, Calopteryx virgo, fluttered across the pond and settled behind some vegetation, so I was unable to get a decent photograph,
and finally, as I turned to leave, a male common darter dragonfly Sympetrum striolatum appeared, hovering over the pond, and finally settling to rest on a head of mint flowers:
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