East Peckham path and Hazel Wood

Today I went back to the West Peckham path and Hazel Wood to see if I could get the same success with hoverflies as I had had yesterday morning. I am now reasonably sure that, particularly at this time of year when the sun is so low, it is more productive to get out during the late morning rather than leave it until the later afternoon, as the shadows get so long later in the day.

Of course today I had to wait until I'd finished teaching, and having unsuccessfully checked The Swan at East Peckham on the off-chance that Peter might be there looking for a walking companion, I set off down the path with Monty at just after 3 p.m. I was happy that we were on our own and I would be able to concentrate on some insect ID and compare this afternoon's results with yesterday morning's haul.

My first impression was that the sunny patches of ivy flowers on the path were very much quieter than yesterday morning, with many fewer wasps, flies and bees than yesterday. As I got further down the path there was actually one patch in the sunshine which was "buzzing" with activity, but it was only the one, while every sunny patch of ivy yesterday morning had been as good as that single patch today. So there wasn't much to photograph, but I did come across some spiders, of which this one had to be photographed from beneath.

I think that this is another individual of the same species, this time visible from the side. I still couldn't see the pattern on the dorsum though!

I also found a whitefly, of which there are several British species to be found. The only one I really knew about is the Cabbage Whitefly, but others include the Norway Maple, Ivy, Honeysuckle, Viburnum and Ash Whiteflies.

The only other insect photographed on the path was this spectaularly ugly Tachinid fly

and at the end of the path all the Jacobs Sheep came over to the gate, presumably to see if I had any food for them!

After our encounter with the Jacobs sheet we got out into the open field and turned left towards the reservoir, alongside the edge of the wood, The verge was really quite bright with Bristly Oxtongue flowers on the remaining live plants, and we finally found a hoverfly. This turned out to be a species I hadn't identified before, although I may have seen it, Eupeodes luniger, the so-called lunar hoverfly. It took me hours to be reasonably sure I'd got it right, after several false starts, so I felt quite chuffed when I finally felt I could put this one to bed!

I then saw several different individuals, including one in Hazel Wood itself, all apparently E. luniger!
Here are several voucher pictures of the first individual to shows the ID characteristics: In the first picture you can see the underside of the abdomen and the dark bands on the sternites are definitely central and don't extend anywhere near to the margins. This puts it into the subgenus Eupeodes.