I was going through my ‘pending’ photos and realised how many images I have from last summer that never got posted, just because each day’s walk in the warmer weather often produces several potential blog subjects. So, while we wait for the weather to improve, I’ll share the occasional 2022 find. And here’s one I’m sure many of you have seen as it has a very wide distribution – meet the Yellow dung fly (Scatophaga stercoraria). The etymology of its scientific name explains this little creature’s preferred habitat: Scatophaga comes from the Greek skatophagos, from skat-, skōr excrement and phagein to eat, and stercoraria is from the Medieval Latin stercorarium meaning toilet (stercorary is an archaic name for a place [e.g. a covered pit] for the storage of manure secure from the weather) (Merrian-Webster Dictionary). So, Scatophaga stercoraria is the dung eater from the dung pit.