Slurp

The sun came out today, and with it an absolute swarm of pollen and nectar feeders arrived on a late-flowering patch of ivy on top of the old farm wall that borders our drive. Why this patch comes into flower so late in October, given that it's in full sun whenever there is some, I really don't know; but with all the hedgerow ivy having now gone over, this feast brought all the usual suspects to our yard. 

The wall is six feet high, so R placed a stepladder to get me up to a comfortable height for photographing the feeding frenzy. He'd probably have thought twice about this if he'd had advance knowledge of what was going to happen a couple of hours later: back in the house I was folding a spare duvet on the floor of my study, and as I bent over it I suddenly lost my balance and crashed to the ground, landing hard on both wrists and my right knee. As I lay there weeping and cursing I tried to think if I'd had any warning dizziness, but there had been nothing - one moment I was standing up and bending forwards, and the next I was flying through the air in a graceless arc. Mr Research told me later that 20% of people suffering the after-effects of Covid are currently reporting issues with their balance - which makes me feel simultaneously better, and worse.

Anyway. This is a female hoverfly, Eristalis pertinax. The identification features for this species are that the front two pairs of feet are orange, and the stripe down the centre of the face is narrow. In the similar Eristalis tenax the front and middle feet are dark, and the face stripe is broad. E. Tenax also has a dark, thickened hind tibia, whereas in E. pertinax the hind tibia is slender, with a proximal pale band. Erstalis pertinax flies from around March until November, with two distinct peaks in spring and summer. Its larvae are among the group known as rat-tailed maggots, and develop in organically-rich pools such as farm drains and ditches.