the golden fly

Thanks for the huge response to yesterday's robin blip, so many views and comments. Robins are always a popular subject though in their cuteness.

At the end of my gloomy walk around the woods, with nothing but a couple of ladybird shots and an out of focus bee effort, the sun finally started to poke it's way through the dense cloud cover. Near the entrance to the park is a glade of what looks like nettle plants, but the point is that the sun can reach them and this is where the flies seem to hatch out.

Several days ago, a large hatch of black flies occurred, the numbers were so massive that the doggers started to complain! This was the St Marks fly, correctly identified by blipper Ceridwen. I did not blip the fly but have been keeping my eyes open for another opportunity. There were plenty around today, but I was distracted by a new fly that seems to be in a mass hatch. Golden wings and extremely long antennae. Any ideas?

Blipper 'Libra' asked me about the differences that I have noticed between Indonesia and England, a very good question and now that I have been back for a couple of weeks, it is time to start writing them down. Rather than doing it all in one blip, I thought I would add a paragraph or two on the subject each day.

Today I will deal with the most obvious difference, temperature. Clearly, there are actually two suns in this solar system. Indonesia uses the original power heavy sun, 10,000K at the surface and 25,000,000K at the core, it causes highly elevated temperatures and severe sunburn but destined to burn out in a few years. The greenies of England have installed a power saving sun, just as bright but cool to the touch, useless for starting fires but will last forever.

The temperature difference between the two countries is quite frankly phenomenal, especially in the winter months. I find this difficult to explain or comprehend. The usual argument is that Indonesia, due to the earths rotating axis geometry, is actually closer to the sun than England. I find this argument weak, as the difference cannot be much more than about a thousand miles. The sun is ninety three million miles away, so by my calculations that makes Indonesia only 1/93,000 closer to the sun and the temperature difference should be less than one thousandth of a degree. This backs up my two sun theory. What do you think?

Update - Identification - it seems to be a moth called the long horn. I am not totally convinced as the wing patternation is different, but certainly close.

Longhorn Moth (Adela reaumurella).

Dave