Christmas in Bloom: Sightings 2025

Hoverfly Sightings W/C 22nd December 2025

It has been a while since I did a sightings blog, but it being Christmas I thought I would go out spotting in and around my locality in order to finish off the records for the year.

Often people will go out on New Years Day to log flowers and birds they have seen. I thought I would do this throughout Christmas week. Over the last few years a few botanical groups have started doing these types of logs, as seen on social media, but I haven’t seen many birding groups doing the same has yet. I am sure it will become popularised over the next few years.

Click below to find out what I found.

The HoverflySpotter logo

What Hoverfly species are to be found in the logo below?

The site has been up a few months now and let me start by thanking all those people that have visited, followed, subscribed and even re-visited, it really does help the channel grow and inspire me to produce more content. If you have not followed or subscribed, please consider it.

🎄 Something a bit lighter today, a little Christmas challenge. 🎅

For those of you who have noticed the logo to the site or the little favicon icon specific to the internet page on your desktop, you might have been wondering what hoverfly species this is…. Well, its no particular species at all it is a mishmash of many species all amalgamated into one.

 I wonder if you can guess which species……. Answers below… 📝

Card Game Nature Fluxx

Nature Fluxx the Card Game

Designed by Andrew Looney and Alison Frone.

Illustration by Derek Ring and Alison Frone.

Publisher Looney Labs.

Player 1-6 Ages 8+ Time to play 10-40 minutes.

www.looneylabs.com

Nature Fluxx is an ecology-themed variant to the popular card game Fluxx, published by Looney Labs and released in 2015. This is a much smaller game than Wingspan and comes in a very compact 10 by 13cm box with 100 cards and 1 sheet of instructions. If you are looking for that stocking filler for Christmas this might be the game. It also comes with a disclosure that 5% of proceeds are donated to environmental groups! 

It’s a very easy game to pick up - shuffle the deck and deal 3 cards to each player. Put the basic rules card on the table and then pick a player to go first. Their first task is to draw 1 and play 1 and that’s where the fun starts. It’s a game that quickly turns into this chaos where the rules are forever changing. The objective of the game is to meet the current goal using your keeper cards, but nobody can win unless there is a goal played. The goals also constantly change, and the next rule change or action might determine whether you win or lose. But beware there are creepers in the deck which can prevent any player from winning not just you!

Bird Board Game Wingspan

Wingspan the board game

Designed by Elizabeth Hargrave

Illustrated by Natalia Rojas, Ana Maria, Martinez Jasamillo and Beth Sobel

Publisher Stonemaier Games

Players: 1-5 Ages 10+ Time to play 40-70minutes

With Christmas fast approaching I thought it would be good this month to do some reviews which may help with that Christmas shopping. The original Wingspan I bought pre-Christmas many years ago, but the expansions have been kindly bought for me in the following Christmases and how delighted have I been to get them. Unboxing a game is exciting—just search "unboxing board games" on YouTube to see its popularity.

Nature themed board games

Introduction to board games:

I have been a board game player ever since I was young. I recall fondly playing cards with my grandma and learning all the different variations of card games. Later I learned how to play draughts and chess with dad, not that I was any good at them. Then there were the family holidays on the east coast where on a rainy day we would play monopoly, dominos and other such traditional games. But it was at the start of lockdown when I was looking for other things that me and my beloved could do to get us through the crisis, that we discovered themed board games.

After watching videos on Dice Tower, I came across several board games that seemed exciting, and that I thought we would both enjoy. During one of those times when we were allowed to go places, instead of going to the coast we went to a board game café in Sheffield to play Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne. I remember it well because it was the first time I had a haircut in months as we walked past a barber shop along the way, my local barber having not returned post lockdown. The café was great, the food delicious, and the staff could not have been more friendly and helped us figure out what can be quite complex games.

Ticket to Ride board game set up

Hoverflies of Britain and NW Europe

Hoverflies of Britain and North-West Europe: A Photographic guide

Sander Bot and Frank Van de Meutter.

Bloomsbury Wildlife (pbk) published 2023.

400 pages, 1797 colour photos, illustrations, and distribution maps.

ISBN 978-1-3994-0245-3

With Christmas drawing closer you might be looking for that special gift to give a budding naturalist or entomologist, well stick around this might that book.

Hoverfly White-clubbed Glasswing (Scaeva pyrastri)

White-clubbed Glasswing (Scaeva pyrastri) Wing length 9.25-11.25. Flight May-Mid August

Species of the week –1st December

The first thing you will notice if you spot this hoverfly, are its abdominal markings. They remind me of hockey sticks, but the shape is often referred to as clubbed or bowed. Some prefer to refer to them as smoothwing, others glasswing due to the lack of microtrichia (tiny hairs) on the wings. There are 5 species listed for the British Isles but there are only 2 that you are likely to come across anytime May to mid-August. These are pryrastri and selentica the main difference being white/cream abdominal markings for the former and yellow for the latter. 

If this hoverfly seems familiar, even if you haven’t found one in the wild, it’s probably because you have seen the 1st edition of Britain’s Hoverflies by S. Ball and R. Morris published by WILDguides, where it is featured on the front cover.