When I blogged, recently, about the hoverflies I’d found on Common fleabane, this species was one of those I included, with a comment that they were numerous but rather camera shy. On a subsequent visit to Grangemoor Park, when I was having another little mooch around the fleabane flowers, the individual shown in today’s photos was completely the opposite, so immersed in feeding that it ignored me, and I managed to get a lot of close up images. I couldn’t resist sharing some with you all.

This is the Thick-legged hoverfly, Syritta pipiens, and I think you can see how it got that common name. It looks like it’s been spending a lot of time at the gym.

The Naturespot website entry for this species includes a comment that ‘there are notable local population explosions, possibly due to mass emergence or perhaps migration’, and I wonder if that has happened this year, as I’ve certainly been noticing many more of this species that in any previous year. Their abundance may be yet another consequence of our summer weather and the heatwaves that resulted from the strong southerly and sou’easterly winds that originated in Europe and North Africa.