Back to the jitty

Mark 13 Comments

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I revisited the aforementioned jitty (snicket, ten-foot, twitchel, ginnel, loanen or loaney (see comments on previous blog)) on another sunny day.

The ivy flowers were buzzing with insects but this time, instead of nipping past (to catch the post) with my mouth closed and my eyes narrowed to avoid swallowing any insects, I stopped to look. First, I listened, and the place was humming with insects.

There was a Red Admiral and a Large White (I can do those) and some wasps (not sure which species), and some hoverflies, some of which looked like wasps and some looked more like bees and some looked more like flies.  There were bluebottle type flies and several other dipterans too. And there were bees. Could I spot a Colletes hederae as suggested by a comment by Richard Wilson?

The more I looked the less sure I was about anything!

Was this a Honey Bee? That’s what I thought when I started, but was it?

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Awful photo by Mark Avery – on an iPhone (that’s my excuse)

But then what is this one?

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Another awful photo by Mark Avery

 

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Yet another awful photo by Mark Avery

Any helpful advice by experts, please? And in this case, you are all more expert than I!

 

I was relieved to find when I walked all the way home (all of 100 yards) that I could identify the Painted Lady on my own ivy…

Bad photo, but nice butterfly
Bad photo, but nice butterfly

I also noticed that on my ivy there were loads (by which I mean loads and loads – thousands) of very small yellowish-green flies which were also on the ivy flowers. They made me think of the Drosophila I had played with in biology lessons at school. Anybody have any ideas about them? Is there an Ivy Drosophila in the UK?

I could get into this invertebrate lark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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13 Replies to “Back to the jitty”

  1. The first photo shows a hoverfly Eristalis species and I suspect it is pertinax but I can’t see the front and middle tarsus which should be yellow. Also the wing stigma and face would help for identification. It does not look like Eristalis tenax, they have a thickened hind femur which resembles the pollen basket of a bee. I’m no expert, just a beginner!

    2. Last Friday we had a gathering of chloropidae on the windows of a corner of the building where I work – must have been 5000+, hundreds on every pane. Now that was a wildlife spectacle! I didn’t know they did that.

  5. I don’t think any of them are honey bees. Bees have four wings and flies two hence di-p-terra. That would be a good place to start.

  6. Mark

    Good on you for making the effort! Keep an eye out.

    As an aside, Chloropid or frit flies are just one of many superficially similar families. Could have been a member of the Drosophilidae as you mentioned or a Heliomyzidae, Dryomyzidae or Lauxaniidae; there are other candidates too. The diversity of Diptera is astounding, 6000 spp in the UK alone. Hoverflies are worth investigating further, an active recording scheme, many species identifiable from photos (if the right bits are on view), a great field guide in the WildGuide series and a useful Facebook page run by Roger Morris.

    Inverts are well worth getting in to. If not hoverflies, there are always spiders…well I would suggest that!

    Happy hunting!

    Richard

    1. Mark – Can I echo Richard’s comment about getting into inverts, and strongly recommending hoverflies. With a British list at about 280, they are about as diverse as birds regularly seen in the UK, and range in difficulty from species that can be done with the naked eye, to others like the genus Cheilosia, which are the LBJs of the hoverfly world (but still easier than an Empidonax flycatcher!). There is an excellent key (Stubbs and Falk) and the Wild Guide that Richard mentions has photos of all the British genera, including pictures of tricky identification features.

      Come….be one of us….

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