Meeting with a "Vulture"

Today I re-visited an old haunt of mine that I had neglected badly in recent years, Allt-yr-Yn Local Nature Reserve and have some further information and dodgy images Here.

My plan for this site is to walk down through the reserve and then back along the canal via the local angling association lakes home, and I followed this as usual.

Light was not great but when I arrived at the lakes, I was informed that the local owls had been relocated, and so went off to search for my fluffy friends.

Although I did hear the young owl's contact calls, I did not actually manage to catch a sight of them.

Whilst sat by the lakeside searching for the now quite mobile fledglings I noticed something in the vegetation in front of me so grabbed this quick image ...

This is a female Scorpion Fly, of the genus Panorpa, probably a Common Scorpion Fly (Panorpa communis), though this is impossible to tell in the field, even the males are difficult.

Scorpion flies belong to an ancient group of insects known as 'Mecopterans' which can be traced back more than 250 million years. It is believed that butterflies and many other species of insect evolved from their ancestors.

They feed on insects but prefer not to work to hard at feeding, preferring dead food, even stealing from spider's webs, I suppose they are the words smallest vultures.

All in all a good end to the day :)