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It seems that we did not have a marmelade fly image for about … 2 days now, so I think it is time for another :-):

A marmelade fly rests on the petals of a large yellow flower before taking flight.

Marmelade Flies on a Yellow Flower

You might also want to enjoy the beautiful texture of those wonderful yellow flower petals. I did not play with the saturation, the color really is that lush!

As I said a few days ago, the anemones are currently popping up like crazy. It seems they are not the only ones, we’ve also got a huge number of mamelade flies:

Two marmelade flies collecting pollen and nectar from an anemone flower.

Marmelade Flies on an Anemone Flower

As you can tell, a marmelade fly (Episyrphus balteatus) looks a bit like a solitary wasp, but it really is a hoverfly and therefore quite harmless. Harmless to everyone and everything but aphids (plant lice or greenflies), that is, which the larvae (would that be marmelade larvae?) are fond of eating.

For this reason the marmelade flies are quite welcome in my garden and I like to have them come around. In case you are wondering, they do not seem to have the habit of becoming annoying like their house fly cousins.

These two, incidentally, are both males. You can tell this because the eyes touch at the top of the head, which is unique to the males. Isn’t it cool what you can find out if you take an interest in what shows up in your pictures? 😉

I was just leaving the house when I spotted the dragonfly that I had been after for days finally sitting still on a rosebud.

Dragonfly on a rosebud

Unfortunately I did not have time to grab my DSLR – fortunately I had the G9 ready in a pocket and managed to squeeze off a few shots before I had to run. I am rather pleased with the depth-of-field (or lack thereof) from such a small sensor.