Wet & Windy August Weather
/Apart from yellow Common Jelly Spot fungus (Dacrymyces stillatus; #542) sprouting out of my old garden furniture and a few flies there’s not much doing in the garden that last week or so. The swifts are gone and it feels like later summer. I finally added a fly-over Linnet (Linaria cannabina, #541) to the garden list and a party of a dozen or so Mistle Thrushes passing over was a sign of successful breeding season. There are plenty of flies about, even when the weather is poor. The fly with the khaki green hairy body is a cluster fly (Pollenia rudis, #540), also called the Attic or Loft Fly because of its habit to overwinter in lofts. While the adults feed on flowers, fruit and faeces, their larvae are parasites of earthworms, doing the usual of burrowing in and eating their host from the inside.
