Paul writes: I often photograph insects and have no idea what I’ve seen until I get home. This is one of those creatures. A fairly insignificant thing, less than 10mm long, basking on a leaf. However once I loaded up the image it was a matter of, ‘Wow, isn’t that fantastic’. Then comes the difficult bit of finding out what it is. The internet is ideally suited to this, although it’s also full of misidentifications. One of my favourite sites for insect ID is NatureSpot, a site for recording wildlife in Leicestershire and Rutland. This has a great selection of picture galleries of all sorts of species. It is also very reliable.
Chironomidae are a family of flies. Midges have a terrible reputation but these are perfectly harmless and are known as non-biting midges. It is impossible to ID them to species from photographs but the plumose antennae of the males make the family easily recognisable.
The larval stages of Chironomids are aquatic so they form an important food source for fish, newts etc. The adults are usually found close to water, especially around the breeding season. I saw this one alongside the River Derwent in North Yorkshire.
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