There is some improved lowland grassland pasture that is grazed for half the year as well as some adjacent woodland. It was one of those lovely summer evenings, with golden light and real warmth. Just a pleasure to be outside taking it all in. I ended up spending an hour pottering about, looking at dung and sweeping the net.
Each sweep yielded a mass of grass seeds but in amongst all that were a lot of grasshopper and cricket nymphs, lots of mirids and a few beetles. 16-spot ladybirds were the most numerous but there were other things like Neocrepidodera ferruginea, Malachius bipustulatus and this rather lovely (and I don't often say that often about soldier beetles) dark form of Cantharis flavilabris. Not a form I've seen before as far as I can remember.
There were also masses of this rather slender robberfly. Tens of them would fly out the net after each sweep as I peered in to take a look but I eventually managed to negotiate one into one of my pots for a proper look. Robberflies are quickly becoming my favourite group of flies, I suspect partly because they are reasonably straightforward to identify so there's a high likelihood of me getting to an ID I'm happy with fairly quickly. Always pleasing when that happens. Anyway, I quickly worked out that this one was in the genus Leptogaster.
With only 2 species, the critical feature is the whether the dark stripe on the abdomen is continuous or not. On these it was, making this Leptogaster cylindrica aka Striped Slender Robberfly.
Looking at NBN, this is a really common fly but I've never knowingly seen one before and it's always rather satisfying to ID something for oneself.
Post inspiration comes from this absolute masterpiece from Ben Lukas Boysen. Draw the curtains, turn the lights down and the volume up.
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