This hoverfly is minted!

I seem to have fallen into a pattern of backblipping - boo! Hopefully I can catch up again today. This was taken yesterday lunchtime in my garden. We had the third day in a row of beautiful Autumn sunshine, although the air temperature had been cool, around 10 degrees C. Nevertheless, there are still quite a lot of insects around, making the most of the late season flowers. This is, I think, the common hoverfly species, Syrphus ribesii, on the flowers of mint in my herb bed. These are lovely insects, obviously having evolved a colouration that gains some protection by mimicking the black and yellow stripes of wasps.