I’d been planning a road trip today, but after one of those inexplicable (and thankfully rare) nights when no matter what strategies I tried, I simply couldn’t sleep, I knew it would be a bad idea for me to drive. So I stayed home, grumpily, and just pottered about. At this time of year, when there’s so much going on and I’m desperate to be out and about, I deeply resent lost days like this, but I’m quite sure I wasn’t fit to be in charge of moving machinery, so common sense had to prevail.
Happily, I didn’t have to stray too far to take this, or operate anything more dangerous than the R5. The season’s first two Great Pied (or Pellucid) Hoverflies turned up at the bottom of the wild garden late last week, but they were extremely antsy and competitive with each other, and I didn’t manage to get them on camera. Males of this species are among the flies that like to hover near the heads of humans, apparently keeping a close eye on our antics, but any movement towards them, including the lifting or swivelling of a camera, tends to make them zoom away out of range. When I’m on reasonable form, and prepared to put in ten or fifteen minutes of patient work, I generally do succeed in getting some flight shots, but these days I find it much easier to stand as still as possible for long periods with the camera held up if I’m using a light macro lens, rather than 100-500 zoom I’m favouring at the moment. Luckily today there was only one male in the area, and he was hungry, so I was able to capture him at rest, feeding from a spray of bramble flowers.
For the record, another couple of Painted Lady butterflies appeared in the garden this afternoon, taking possession of a large clump of red valerian and refusing to let any other insect near it. This was quite entertaining for a while, reminding me quite strongly of my old English Pointer bringing himself to the point of exhaustion trying to clear an entire beach of gulls, but I was less amused when the insect they chased away was the fresh Hummingbird Hawkmoth I was trying to photograph. But they will probably move on quite soon, and I dare say the Hawkmoth will come back another day.
R: L2, C10, D25.
