Hoverflies for 30 Days Wild

If you read this blog regularly, you may realise that I have a fondness for hoverflies, those patterned flies that mimic bees and other insects. Hoverflies are harmless, they don't sting or bite but they mimic insects that do sting and bite, to warn off predators. (This doesn't always stop their predators, I've seen gangs of wasps attacking and eating hoverflies - and of course the wasps need to eat and have youngsters to feed and kill pest insects as well as hoverflies.)

If you want to learn to identify insects beyond butterflies and larger moths, then hoverflies are a great place to start. Some of them are easy to identify to species level (eg the Marmalade hoverfly, see below) and others are easy to identify to a more general level (eg Syrphus sp, again see below) while there are yet others that offer the challenge of being difficult to identify at all, which gives you a range of levels of knowledge as you explore this fascinating group of insects.

There are 250 species of hoverflies in the UK and since lockdown, we have found that at least 20 of these species can be found in the local cemeteries that we walk round most days for our #DailyExercise. Here are photos of some of the most distinctive of these species:

Marmalade hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus)

Syrphus sp

Narcissus bulb fly (Meredon equestris)

Footballer hoverfly (Helophilus pendulus)

Leucozonium leucorum.

Batman hoverfly (Myathropa florea)

Epistrophe eligans.

pellucid fly (Volucella pellucens)

Resources about Hoverflies

The Nature Spot Guide to Hoverflies.
All About Hoverflies page.
Steven Falk's Flickr album of Hoverfly photos.

If you're on Facebook, you may be interested in the Hoverfly UK group, which can help you to identify the hoverflies you see.

For 30 Days Wild.