Might have seen one Purple Emperor flying high over the Knights Park Corner Oak for about half a second, but couldn't really tell!
Turning to the commoner woodland butterflies, here is a Comma, being very leaf-like indeed.
Here is a Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria, also trying to look like a leaf:
and a rather brighter butterfly, a Gatekeeper,
and a very worn Meadow Brown, probably a male from the uniformity of the hind wing.
This is a male Southern Hawker, posing nicely for its photo, and confirmed on ispot. However it did look to me as though the light coloured patterning on the abdominal sections is all sky blue - which is supposed to be the rarer form.
This is a male Eristalis pertinax with its yellow front and mid tarsi, and a yellow basal section to the rear tibiae. It has also got a very clearly tapered abdomen, and a little bit of shading on the wing, all of which fits.
This one, another male, cannot be pertinax as it has dark front tarsi. However it should not really be arbustorum either, as it has a fairly clear face stripe, and no clearly swollen hind tarsi, although rubbed arbustorum can show dark on the face as well, and the swelling of the hind tarsi can be ambiguous. These two features are well seen in the next picture.
Difficult to get a good ID though, because the pictures aren't good enough. Does look like a small quadrate stigma perhaps, so one possibility is Eristalis interruptus, but this could never be a reliable ID at all.
Myathropa florea was also present in fairly good numbers, certainly better than I remember last year.
Turning to the commoner woodland butterflies, here is a Comma, being very leaf-like indeed.
Here is a Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria, also trying to look like a leaf:
and a rather brighter butterfly, a Gatekeeper,
and a very worn Meadow Brown, probably a male from the uniformity of the hind wing.
This is a male Southern Hawker, posing nicely for its photo, and confirmed on ispot. However it did look to me as though the light coloured patterning on the abdominal sections is all sky blue - which is supposed to be the rarer form.
This is a male Eristalis pertinax with its yellow front and mid tarsi, and a yellow basal section to the rear tibiae. It has also got a very clearly tapered abdomen, and a little bit of shading on the wing, all of which fits.
This one, another male, cannot be pertinax as it has dark front tarsi. However it should not really be arbustorum either, as it has a fairly clear face stripe, and no clearly swollen hind tarsi, although rubbed arbustorum can show dark on the face as well, and the swelling of the hind tarsi can be ambiguous. These two features are well seen in the next picture.
Difficult to get a good ID though, because the pictures aren't good enough. Does look like a small quadrate stigma perhaps, so one possibility is Eristalis interruptus, but this could never be a reliable ID at all.
Myathropa florea was also present in fairly good numbers, certainly better than I remember last year.
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