Saturday March 4

Plans have been shelved and events postponed this week as Lyn and I continue to suffer from our tummy bugs.

This morning we are both feeling a bit better, but we've had a few false dawns since Tuesday. The morning was quite sunny, so I felt inspired to stick my nose out of the back door to see if any mini-beasts might have landed on our south-facing brickwork.

This minimal effort produced two flies and a Common Wasp. The latter flew off before I could grab my camera. However, the flies were reasonably co-operative.

I wasn't planning to include any flies in this blog because most are not identifiable from photographs, but you can often get to a conclusion of sorts, so here goes.

Bluebottle - probably Calliphora vicina

The Bluebottle under the kitchen window turned out to be one of two species; either Calliphora vicina or Calliphora vomitoria. Given our week I was really hoping it was the latter, but by the time I had discovered that I needed to establish whether its "cheeks" were orange it had disappeared.

I then found several flies which fitted the House Fly group and in fact turned out to be Phoania tugriorum which is apparently a typically early-year fly.

Phoania tuguriorum

My fly-spotting was brought to a premature end by the disappearance of the sun. But I can already see some slivers of blue sky so more thrilling insects may follow.