I haven't posted any pictures of insects in the garden recently so today having been put off birds by an unfortunate incident recently I stayed in the garden and took out my Tamron 1:1 Macro lens and searched for Hoverflies. These are amongst my favourite insects and well worth studying and recording. This is one of the 15 species of Hoverfly recorded in my garden and a new one for the list  This is a female who is intent on egg laying, and in the shot above is coming in to land an an Aqualegia flowerhead. 

Here she is depositing an egg on the flowerhead. They are a very useful insect in the garden as the larvae, once hatched feed on aphids. that is 'greenfly" and "blackfly". It is quite important not to use pesticides in the garden because the "natural balance" is upset, kill the hoverly and the aphids have no natural predators and hence are allowed to take over!

You can quite clearly see the "greenfly" in this shot so she has chosen wisely. The insect below is a different specimen and I am not certain from this shot iff it is a male or female.

A bit about the "Snow Geese" posted yesterday. After posting the images on the web site"Birdguides" I have been contacted by the admin team to say that people had suggested that they were possibly Ross's Geese and not Snow, or even some kindd of hybrid involving Ross's. I am waiting for confirmation and will post the comclusion here when I know better.

 I have recently added a Metz flashgun to my list of equipment and been trying to get the best out of it by experimenting in the garden. I also had the Bat detector out and was visited by my first bat of the year, a Pipistrelle. I thought I would try to get a picture in the dark using the flash. You can imagine how fast bats fly and how hard it is to try and capture them in the beam of light. Well would you believe that my first shot produced at least a record of a bat in the garden if not in actual fact a good photo!

The white specs are insects that the bat is obviously catching in flight.