Flies, Bees and Wasps

You get days when there seems to be nothing about, no birds, no butterflies and no dragonflies. However, if you look hard enough there is always something flying, even if it's usually the Cleggies out to drink your blood.

Below are a few of the Flies, Hoverflies, and Bees encountered this year. I have tied to identify them all but its hard work. There are so many that look similar and without killing and pinning them you cannot confirm the identifying features.  If you spot any errors please let me know. There are no pictures of cleggies, they don't usually survive long enough.

First the Flies. Some of them can be really beautiful.

Green Bottle Fly - Lucilia sericata

Blue Bottle  -   Calliphora  sp. probably vicina

Fly - Graphomya maculata Female

Fly - Musca autumnalis

Fly - Tachina fera or magnicornis

Fly - Phasia hemiptera

Sarcophaga sp. probably bercaea

Hoverflies

Tapered Drone Fly (Hoverfly) - Eristalis pertinax   

Dronefly (Hoverfly) -  Eristalis tenax

Hoverfly - Chrysotoxum bicinctum

Hoverfly - Myathropa florea

Helophilus pendulus

Hornet Mimic Hoverfly  -  Volucella zonaria

The Bees

Wool Carder Bee  -  Anthidium manicatum

Buff-tailed Bumblebee  -  Bombus terrestris   
Has a narrow buff band between the black and white on the tail

Common Carder Bee - Bombus pascuorum

Ivy Bee  -  Colletes Hederae

Large Carpenter Bee - Xylocopa violacea   (Croatia)

Two Wasp

Field digger wasp  -  Mellinus arvensis

Ichneumon Wasp - Amblyteles armatorius

a couple of shots of a Scorpion Fly

Scorpion Fly -  Panorpa communis

Scorpion Fly -  Panorpa communis

a couple of Mayflies - I think, but it may be safer to refer to them as Ephemeroptera

Mayfly 

Mayfly  -  Ephemera danica ?

and a Hornet

European Hornet  -  Vespa crabro

Nothing really unusual here but quite interesting once you get into it. Identification of the Mayflies was certainly beyond my abilities at the moment. I have a lot to learn.

Scarce Chaser

Tuesday was a bit of a mixed day. Good in that for the first time this year we saw Dragonfly and Damselfly in decent numbers. Bad in that we did not find our target, the Club-tailed Dragonfly.

We spent most of the morning on a detailed search of just over a mile of the Arun river bank from New Bridge near Billingshurst up as far as the old mill. It was interesting, we found Hairy Dragonflies, various Damselflies, exuvia hanging from vegetation, and a variety of insects that I am still trying to identify. What we didn't find was any sign of the Clubtails. I have a bad feeling about this. Last year I spent at least five days searching various stretches of the river without even a sniff of a clubtail. Do they still survive on the Arun?

What did we find? A freshly emerged Scarce Chaser in lovely condition and fortunately for us reluctant to fly.

Large Red Damselflies - my first of the year.

Azure Damselflies

Male and Female Banded Demoiselle

Common Blue Butterfly - another first for the year

And finally a Mayfly, or what I have always known as a Mayfly, freshly emerged and hanging out to dry.

Reading up on them I see that Mayfly is the common name for the group of insects  Ephemera vulgata with fifty one species known in the UK. Facinating to read that these were one of the first winged insects. Fossils have been found dating back over 300 million years, well before the dinosaurs. Hmmm... - a little bit more research and this could be the start of another list!


But back to the Clubtail. I cannot face another year of dipping this Dragonfly so the next good day and it will be a trip up to Goring-on-Thames and a search around the railway bridge. Look out for the next Blog.