Hoverfly sightings week commencing 15th Sept 2025

Tale of Two Gardens

Stairfoot Garden 15th Sept – around 4pm

It's been a bit of a mixed weather week, a little wet & windy although still quite warm. The flora in my garden is now a little sparse, but it was nice to have the Great Pied Volucella pellucens drop in to visit the still flowering buddelia, this was the first sighting for the year in the garden.

Hoverflies Logged: 

Great Pied (Volucella pellucens), Common Banded (Syrphus ribesii)

Facts about hoverflies

Things to know about hoverflies:

     1. Hoverflies are flies meaning they have 2 wings instead of 4 like Bees, Wasps & Ants. The 2nd pair of wings have devolved into club-like structures called halteres that act as a gyroscope. They can even fly backwards as well as hover.

Hoverfly sightings September 13th 2025

Stairfoot walk along the Dearne 13^th Sept 2.30-4pm

16 degrees, sunny intervals slight breeze

We went looking for migrating butterflies and hoverflies after watching a video by Trevor Pendleton on the Youtube channel 'Ramblings of an Entomologist'. See link below if you would like to watch.

https://youtu.be/eobOGqYFjxA?si=itQN-q0OpCOZaA9b

We certainly didn’t get a Clouded Yellow (Colias croceus) but we did see a Large White (Pieris brassicae) in a hurry heading in the Sheffield direction, was it migrating?? There were however a few Small Copper (Lycaena phlaeas), a Small White (Pieris rapae), a couple of Speckled Woods (Parage aegeria) and a Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta) in amongst the bramble, not sure they were going anywhere.

On the Hoverfly front:

Hoverfly - Striped-backed Glimmer (Riponnesia splendens)

Striped-backed Glimmer (Riponnesia splendens) Size: 5.5-7mm Flight: May-Sep

Species of the week – 13^th Sept

This is not a common species and would seem to be localised, with only 1479 records listed on NBN as of September 2025

https://species.nbnatlas.org/species/NBNSYS0100005170#overview

This species is in a genus all by itself within the U.K, having previously been listed under the genus Orthonevra due to its morphological likeness. Prior to this it was classified in 1822 under the genus Chrysogaster, again a not too dissimilar morphological grouping.

Hoverfly sightings September 2025

This page will list hoverflies and notable species seen at various locations within the UK throughout the year.

♂= male   ♀=female

Barnsley Main 11th Sept 12-1pm

Not much around temperature 15-16 degrees, winds gusty with sunny intervals.

♀ Footballer (Helophilus pendulus) warming up on a bramble leaf, ♀ Common Banded (Syrphus ribesii) + two unknown sex, Cheilosia sp, ♀ Lunuled Apideater(Eupeodes luniger) all on ragwort. 4 species seen

Wosborough Reservoir 5th Sept 12-4.30pm