Recently I wrote about buying a new camera which required some practice, but after a few days of household items such as pencils and peppercorns, I was desperate for some insects to photograph. My first outing immediately after the snow drew a complete blank, so I had to wait a couple of days for it to warm up before bothering the Ivy in the garden.
As luck would have it, the very first thing I found turned out to be Dioxyna bidentis, the Bur-marigold Fly. This turned out to be the first record of this species for VC55. Even odder, there's no Bur-marigold around here, but some research told me that the larvae of this species develop in the flower heads of a range of Asteraceae. Here, I suspect that's my carefully cultivated Ragwort (at least, what survives annual decimation by the Cinnabar Moth larvae).
This odd coincidence makes me wonder what would happen if Jennifer Owen were to repeat her 30 year study - how different would the results be?
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