Knowing that the weather was forecast to turn, I went out into the garden early (by my standards, at least), in the hope of finding yesterday’s leafcutter bee back at work. I staked out the fence post and waited for a while, but she didn’t appear, and eventually I got bored and started looking for other things to photograph.
Sadly it was the kind of morning that makes you fear that the Invertebrate Extinction Crisis is gathering pace, and in the space of quarter of an hour I found just four insects across the entire garden. Of these, this Marmalade Fly (Episyrphus balteatus) was the most engaging as she drifted across the montbretia patch, and though by this time it was far too dark for taking flight shots I had a go anyway, on what must be about the slowest shutter speed I’ve ever used for this endeavour. The fact that it just about worked was purely thanks to the fact that the hoverfly was still quite torpid, and moving very slowly.
R: C4, D8.
