In the summer our garden is full of hoverflies, and I spend frame after frame trying to get a good picture of one hovering next to an attractive flower. Most of these were taken around Brockwell Park, Palace Road Nature Garden, or my own garden, with the Sony 90mm f2.8, before I discovered focus stacking.
This little guy is a small garden spider. Our garden is full of these in the autumn, the ones above the compost bin growing especially large. But this picture was taken at the end of June, and they were still tiny.
Spiders will keep growing through their lives, but this one did not get the chance. Just a couple of minutes after I took the picture, it was caught by a rather larger crab spider on the underside of that leaf which both of us had failed to spot.
This is a hornet hoverfly. They’re the biggest hoverfly in the UK, and can be a bit alarming when you first see one. But they don’t sting, and eat nectar and flowers.
These days, they’re fairly common the south-east in summer, and are slowly spreading north.
