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Friday 4 May 2012

Black and redcurrant flowers

The currants are flowering at the moment, but I'd hardly notice if it wasn't for the humming of insects around them. The flowers are so insignificant I thought I'd take a closer up look.

There are 2 blackcurrants and 2 redcurrants here in this corner of my veg patch

As I might have guessed, the flowers are actually quite pretty when you get a chance to see them properly!

Blackcurrant flowers


Redcurrant flowers

I took some snaps of a insect with a flash of orange on its abdomen; I thought it was some kind of bee until I looked at the photos and saw it was rather strange looking. Curiosity lead me to spend some time going through hoverfly photos on the internet until I finally managed to ID it, which pleased me no end. It's a Heineken Hoverfly (Rhingia campestris) which is quite common and the larvae feed on dung. With the amount of cows around here that's not surprising then!

It didn't look anything out of the ordinary in the first photo, but when I saw the next two that's when I decided to spend time trying to identify it, as it has a very odd snout!

What looks like a fairly normal insect...

...until you see its snout.
You can imagine I was wondering what on earth I was looking at, at first!

Heineken Hoverfly (Rhingia campestris)

I love this whole new world that my camera opens up to me :-)

3 comments:

  1. Beautiful photos MMM, and you are so right, that when you take the time to rally look at things - even things you may just walk past most days, there is beauty.

    I love the hover fly - although why someone chose to name it after a brand of truly awful larger is beyond me,lol.xxx

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  2. I have blackcurrant flower envy Mandy, still waiting for our leaves to uncurl! Super pics.

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  3. Thanks both of you xx. Mumma Troll I couldn't find the origin of the name as I thought it a bit odd too, but feel it may well be named after a Mr Heineken who may have discovered it..... lol

    And Ladybug I still have some left frozen here! I'll make some more blackcurrant ice cream base for when we get our next bout of summer weather....July maybe!

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