Slurp...

After waiting around to take Alex to a client, she decided she didn't want him until midday! So I headed off for a quick walk round Swaddywell Pit hoping to get some artistic inspiration. It was surprisingly dull and overcast with intermittent light rain, and this, compounded by the profoundly dry state of a site that normally has seepages and ponds, was just a bit depressing.

The sun came out in the afternoon and I spent some time observing the large stand of Sweet Galingale growing in our larger pond. It supports a very large population of a small leafhopper called Flastena funipennis (found new to Britain from Cambridge by Alex and Pete in 2018). The population is attracting many other invertebrates - some visiting to snack on the sticky honeydew that it leaves on the Galingale leaves, others to parasitise and predate it. 

In the half hour or so that I was watching the plant I added three new species to the garden list including this fly, Phasia hemiptera.  This species is strongly sexually dimorphic  - our visitor was a female and has noticeable orange hair patches on the sides of the thorax, and the abdomen shows some subdued orange marking. The males are even more colourful with curved patterned wings. It is a parasite of Heteropteran bugs, with known hosts including Green Shieldbug and Forest Bug. The female lays her eggs on these insects and the larvae then develop inside the living host.