Humblebee In Flight

What a lovely day we have had - it has been gloriously sunny and pleasantly warm all day.  Needless to say, despite having lots of chores to do after our days away, we have been tending to focus on the outdoor jobs that need doing :-). So the lawn is mowed, and the motorcycle cleaned and polished.  We've also found some time for the grocery shopping, laundry and bread making, but have still managed to spend most of the day outside.

The garden is full of flying things - and having not taken it away with me, it seemed a shame not to get the macro lens out to give some of them their 5 minutes of fame.  The Bee-Fly in the main likes to hover obligingly so this shot is not as difficult to achieve as you might think.  I hadn't realised before that the very long proboscis if bifurcated, but if you look closely you see that it is at the tip. I've always called these things "bee-flies" but I now understand that another common name for them is a "humblebee", which I really like and will probably use in future.

I nearly blipped the young female large red damselfly that is my extra.  She is very attractive, but in the end the humble bee-fly won out :-)