Yellow dung fly

After a busy week, it was quite a treat to have a day at home, and as the weather was fine, I spent most of it in the garden. The greenhouse was tidied, lots of seeds were sown and the plants we bought on Wednesday have nearly all been put in.

I spent some time prowling round the borders with my camera, looking for any species that haven't yet been added to our garden list. The most abundant insect was the common yellow dung fly, which is one of the first species to be seen in the year. They spend their lives on dung, or looking for it. They are predators and dung supplies their breeding and hunting ground. The larvae eat other insect larvae that live in dung, whilst the adults ambush insects visiting the dung. The adult flies stray away from dung to hunt down flies elsewhere only on rare occasions. Despite their rather unsavoury habits they are really rather beautiful.

This evening Alex and Ben (with a little help and advice from Pete) cooked me a wonderful Mother's Day meal - a starter of Thai-style prawn cakes on shredded lettuce, followed by beef rendang and then a rhubarb and orange meringue pie, made using our own rhubarb :) I am totally replete and nearly ready for bed, as I have another busy day tomorrow.