I hadn’t really wondered why these insects are called craneflies but have just been reading that the name comes from their resemblance to a crane – the long-legged bird, not the machine. These particular craneflies, the male above, the female dangling below, are Tipula vernalis, not a species I’d seen before, but my springtime habit of keeping a keen out for insects on Dandelions paid off. Spring is when this cranefly species first appears (hence the vernalis epithet, from the Latin vernus meaning ‘of the spring’), and it continues to float about its woodland and damp grassland home for several months, till June.