Crook, County Durham: Some hoverflies are tricky to identify, but this wasp mimic should be easy for Batman fans
Instinctively, I shied away from the buzzing near my ear, thinking it was a wasp. No, just a harmless hoverfly, a blur of wings and a body fringed with golden hairs, perfectly stationary, as if dangling by an invisible thread in the afternoon sunshine.
Hoverfly flight is a wondrous thing, made possible by halteres: flexible, vibrating, club-shaped rods under each wing. They act like stabilising gyroscopes, constantly feeding back information to the insect about its position, allowing instant, precise flight adjustments. The slightest warping of a wing translates into darting, directional flight. And that’s what happened as I watched, listening to its invisible, barely audible airwaves, spreading like ripples in a puddle from this aerial diadem.
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