Funnily enough, I passed by the same site, still peering into ever buttercup I could find, and I found it again! It might not have been the same individual, but I like to think that it was. When I first saw this sawfly (above) it was busy doing whatever it was doing – hunting, gathering pollen? – at about 4:30 pm on a sunny afternoon. Sawfly ( Tenthredo arcuata) 31 May 16:30pm. Including a great one, here, prepared by Krisztina Fekete of the Natural History Museum. There are lots of resources for identifying sawflies, see here. There are a few of these sawflies which look very similar when they are covered from head to toe in yellow pollen! However, I think this is the right one, based on appearance and location. At first I thought that it was a solitary bee, but some research revealed that it was a sawfly which sometimes predates small insects visiting flowers. Photo by Raymond JC CannonĪnother insect I came across a few times (below), was a sawfly, Tenthredo arcuata (Tenthredinidae). Black-horned Gem (Microchrysa polita) – I think! 1 June 20, Scarborough, N Yorks, UK. The game is to look at a lot of flowers! Then, it is fun to try and identify the different species, like this little soldier fly, Microchrysa polita, the black-horned gem (below). It has to be said that the vast majority of buttercups do not have any insect visitors, at least large ones, at any given time. Insects move quickly and tend to avoid close scrutiny by a large mammal armed with a camera! So some of the insects I saw on buttercups, particularly bees and flies, were unfortunately, not recorded for posterity! However, persistence pays off and I managed to build up a small portfolio of ‘butterfly bedfellows’ over the course of a couple of days. In short, buttercups must welcome all manner of pollinators.
The numerous stigmata in buttercup flowers (below) cannot all be pollinated by a single visit of one insect, so several visits are needed – by one or more species – to ensure maximal reproductive success for a given flower (Steinbach & Gottsberger, 1994). I find these flies difficult to identify! Take a look here. This tachinid fly ( Tachinidae) (below) was quite a common visitor, but I did not feel confident about identifying it. Most buttercups are nectar-producing and are visited by a vast array of different insect species, predominantly bees, flies, wasps and beetles, but many others as well. At least I was when the sun was out! Bulbous Buttercup ( Ranunculus bulbusos). Ever alert to possibility of photographing insects, I have been going around peering into their shiny yellow flowers, to see what I could find. Plodding a regular path near my home, I have been enjoying the emergence of buttercups over the past few weeks. Cocksfoot moth ( Glyphipterix simpliciella) on buttercup, 1 June 2020.
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