Initially, the letter F was going to be for flies then two fabulous little birds popped up last Tuesday and stole the show (though there were also flies that day). The birds were two Firecrests, probably those first discovered at this location in early November and not seen since, despite me and other birders looking for them. The site has quite dense vegetation so little birds like these can easily disappear.

And the flies? Well, I had spent about 20 minutes walking through the area, had stood at various spots searching for movement in the trees and bushes, but not seen any sign of the Firecrests. So, as this is an area with lots of lovely deciduous trees, I decided to ferret through the leaf litter for any nice invertebrates. I’d turned over about 50 soggy, muddyish leaves before I had some success, finding these two Lauxaniidae fly larvae. I’d just finished taking some photos of them when I heard a special little peeping and there were the Firecrests.