68! That’s the number of hoverfly larvae I found when turning over Sycamore leaves in a damp shady spot in one of my local parks last week. And they were all plump and well grown so had obviously been feasting well on aphids. (I have noticed during my leaf fossicking this year that, while insect numbers overall have been well down on previous years, the numbers of aphid seem about usual, which means that those creatures feeding on aphids seem also to have been thriving.)

The hoverfly larvae were of only two types, the Epistrophe grossulariae shown above (these larvae are usually green but turn an orange-brown colour in the autumn, an effective camouflage tactic – hence the two colour variations shown here), and those from the various Syrphus species shown below (it’s not possible to be more specific as to the exact identification of these larvae).