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29 Aug 2010, 4:31 pm
I went for a walk in the woods today (sunny after light rain, nice and warm) and photographed a lot of spiders and flies. I also saw what I thought were bees while I was out, except they do not have antennae like bees and only have two wings, hence they are probably a hoverfly (eristalis tenax?):
29 Aug 2010, 8:39 pm
30 Aug 2010, 5:42 am
dyingofpoetry wrote:
Yep, looks like the European hoverfly to me (eristalis tenax).
I am becoming (slowly) educated. I am used to the wasp mimics like Chrysotoxum cautum, which seemed to me to be the predominant hoverfly around here, and ignored all those "honey bees" and "bumble bees" without ever noticing that they were actually hugely interesting flies. (I am fascinated too by the amazing variety of morphology and lifestyles of the spiders - I never looked so closely before this year.)
I went back and looked at some bee photographs I took at their hive in an orchard a couple of weeks ago, and the differences are quite striking once I see them:
