Long Hoverfly

A day off would have been welcome, but we were booked in for the second day surveying our rail-side site. Fortunately the morning was overcast, and the temperatures relatively cool, which made working much more pleasant. And no hills to climb - only the odd steep bank!

The sun finally appeared in the early afternoon, but it never became overwhelmingly hot. There wasn't much tome for photography, but I was able to snatch this image of a female Long Hoverfly Sphaerophoria scripta sitting on the fruits of Tutsan. When viewed closely, she's really very attractive, with a bluish band in the middle of each black stripe.

This is a very common and  highly mobile species that seems to be prone to mass immigration from Europe and regular expansion into northern Britain (where it may not be fully residential). It is also thought that it undertakes a southward migration at the end of summer. 
The larvae are predators of ground-layer aphids on a variety of plants including broadleaved crops and cereals.