Drone, drone, drone on...

I haven't had many opportunities recently to photograph hoverflies, as the weather has been pretty wet and windy of late. Today, however, was a day of bright sunshine and showers. I attended a Sharing Good Practice event at Scottish Natural Heritage's Battleby Centre, North of Perth. The edge of the car park has a wedge of ground planted up with a mix of arable flower species such as poppies, cornflowers, corn marigolds and yarrow. In between showers, the patch was covered in hoverflies. This one, feeding on the nectar of yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is a drone fly Eristalis tenax, a species I have used for a blip on a couple of previous occasions (search for the tag 'hoverflies'). I really like the way that this drone fly still has droplets of water on its body and wings from the recent rain shower!