Shiny, Shiny ...

.... even shiner viewed LARGE.

At last I've managed to get a decent shot of a shiny green fly, something I've been trying for ages but with no success as my macro and/or winds have thwarted me. This is the first one I've managed to take that I've been even remotely happy with - I'm prettyy pleased with in fact, I like the almost mirror like effect of it's bum and the sheerness of the wings, showing the leaf surface beneath.

As on other occasions I had a bit of a blip dilemma today - I also took this shot of a Meadow Brown almost looking at me, and love its little face. Technically it's the better shot of the two, but I had a presentable fly shot to blip at last and in the absence of a Scorpion fly I was damned if I was going to blip anything else!

Something rather odd happened today. This morning I finally found another full size male Scropion fly on the usual thistle patch (I did actually find a much smaller one on Friday, but it was too small for a decent macro). This morning's one was rather active. It crawled around on the thistle flower then finally settled on one place. I slowly moved in for a macro of it from above, and it promptly crawled round to the underside of the flower. I moved back. It then crawled back on top of the flower facing me, and seemed to stretch the front of its body upwards as if checking me out. Suddenly it flew, really fast, off the flower and straight at my abdomen, colliding with me then flying around and off behind me! Two possibilites have occured to me: 1) I was wearing a light, bright creamy blue-green vest, perhaps it thought my vest was a flower and aimed to land and feed or 2) It really took exception to my camera (and me) and was basically telling me to piss off go away and leave it alone. I suspect it may have been the latter! The thought of a tiny Scropion fly trying to headbutt a human in the stomach is rather amusing ..... lol.