A walk in Ravenstone Road Copse, part of Yardley Chase, last week produced only a few flies. Several small craneflies were disturbed from the ride edges and turned out to be Tipula pagana, one of the subgenus Savtshenkia. I then caught two more in my moth trap in the garden in Rothwell the next day.
There were some spectacular fungi growing in the wood and several fungus gnats were seen disappearing under the caps of honey fungus Armillaria mellea. They kept flying into grass tussocks or onto a tree trunk and were hard to observe. I did manage to net some. They all turned out to be Mycetophila britannica males. There was also one lesser house fly Fannia parva in the net.
Honey Fungus Armillaria mellea
Mycetophila britannica on Honey Fungus (c) Jeff Blincow
A walk round my garden today only produced the one species of hoverfly, Helophilus pendulus. These are regularly sitting on the leaves of a variegated sedge at the side of my pond. I suspect the males are waiting for females as their larvae develop as rat-tailed maggots in the pond.
Helophilus pendulus taken at Boddington Meadow last year
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