This was a fairly quick visit, with the hogweed flowers starting to produce insects really well now. This fly looks at first sight as if it has an incredibly long tongue, but in fact it has incredibly long legs, with the tongue behind its front left leg!
I was really pleased to correctly identify this immature male Southern Hawker, Aeshna (or perhaps Aeschna) cyanea, and have it confirmed on ispot. You can see the filmy iridescence on its wings very clearly in the first shot. Maybe it had just emerged from one of the small Dene Park ponds, or perhaps from the shady lakes of Golden Stable Wood over the road!
Here is the female Leucozona laternaria again, possibly the same one as the past week or so if it is spending most of its time on these flowers along this section of track and I am keeping a reasonable look out!
Myathropa florea, which like the Leucozona also depends on sites like rot-holes for its larval development was also present on the hogweed, with the photo of this male showing the grey thoracic bars very well:
Another hoverfly seen was the very common Melanostoma scalare, with this highly cropped photo of a female showing the reversed triangles of yellow on the abdominal tergites beneath the wings:
At the other end of the hoverfly size scale was this male Volucella pellucens, with its shiny white band across its midriff and wing shades.
This male Eristalis has the characteristic rounded dumpiness of many of the Eristalis tenax I have seen to date, confirmed by the broad black face stripe and hairy black rear femora. This was on the St Johns Wort, I should check the popularity of these flowers!
There have been a lot of these little Tortricoid moths around on the hogweed flowerheads, which turned out to be Pammene aurana.
And finally, here is a "blue" form female Common Blue Damselfly, Enallagma cyathigerum,
I was really pleased to correctly identify this immature male Southern Hawker, Aeshna (or perhaps Aeschna) cyanea, and have it confirmed on ispot. You can see the filmy iridescence on its wings very clearly in the first shot. Maybe it had just emerged from one of the small Dene Park ponds, or perhaps from the shady lakes of Golden Stable Wood over the road!
Here is the female Leucozona laternaria again, possibly the same one as the past week or so if it is spending most of its time on these flowers along this section of track and I am keeping a reasonable look out!
Myathropa florea, which like the Leucozona also depends on sites like rot-holes for its larval development was also present on the hogweed, with the photo of this male showing the grey thoracic bars very well:
Another hoverfly seen was the very common Melanostoma scalare, with this highly cropped photo of a female showing the reversed triangles of yellow on the abdominal tergites beneath the wings:
At the other end of the hoverfly size scale was this male Volucella pellucens, with its shiny white band across its midriff and wing shades.
This male Eristalis has the characteristic rounded dumpiness of many of the Eristalis tenax I have seen to date, confirmed by the broad black face stripe and hairy black rear femora. This was on the St Johns Wort, I should check the popularity of these flowers!
There have been a lot of these little Tortricoid moths around on the hogweed flowerheads, which turned out to be Pammene aurana.
And finally, here is a "blue" form female Common Blue Damselfly, Enallagma cyathigerum,
No comments:
Post a Comment