One of the many things I love about gardening for wildlife is that it encourages you to look harder. It is a terrible distraction from actually getting on and doing some gardening, but I find that I want to check out what each creature is that passes by, and to gauge what it is doing.
And yesterday in my garden was all about insects. Bumblebees, Honeybees and butterflies were all present in numbers, but it was the hoverflies that were causing the garden to really buzz.
Now I am close to being a novice when it comes to identifying hoverflies, unlike one of my colleagues who is currently doing her RSPB sabbatical by spending a month finding hoverflies on RSPB nature reserves. The last time I saw her, she had managed to identify over 250 species in her own garden alone - yes, that's the incredible diversity of hoverflies that is out there.
But at least I do know this one - Episyrphus balteatus, or as it is colloquially known, the Marmalade Hoverfly. And this individual photographed yesterday is just one of dozens that have been in my garden for about a month now.
There is a very good chance that it is in yours too, being a very common and widespread species throughout the UK. What makes it easy to identify are those two narrow black stripes in between the thicker black stripes on its abdomen.
The orange-and-black colouration is to make birds and other predators think that they are a wasp and so avoid them, but the good news for us is that they don't sting, or bite, and they pollinate flowers (in my garden Marjoram, Tansy and Fleabane are currently top of the menu), and their maggot-like larvae eat aphids. Now that's the kind of marmalade you want spread everywhere!
You learn something new every day. I didn’t know hoverfly larvae ate aphids, that is good news, I’m always plagued with them.
Last year I dotted Ladybird houses all around the garden, this year I have more ladybirds than I’ve ever had and they have eaten their way through most of the aphids (perhaps with a little help from the hoverflies). I’d like to think that providing them somewhere safe and warm to overwinter was a contributing factor to their numbers but there is no way of really knowing.
I’ve made some Ladybird towers this year just in case it had something to do with me.