Mastodawn

Still slowly crawling towards full-blown spring here – mostly cloudy & not that warm yet 🤷‍♂️

But still some things to see in the garden, starting with this pretty fly.

From the colouration, & arrangement of bristles on the thorax & around the eyes, my best guess is a female common European greenbottle (Lucilia sericata; 🇩🇪 Goldfliege / Grüne Goldfliege).

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Mark McCaughrean 9h ago

Harder to photo & ID is this much smaller metallic fly, perched on the edge of a tulip.

From the shape & sheen, it's likely in genus Psilopa (shore or brine flies in English; Uferfliege in 🇩🇪), & one plausible option for the species would be P. nitidula.

That said, we're quite some way from any sea or brine, so maybe it's something else entirely 😬

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Mark McCaughrean 8h ago

And then there's even smaller spider that was dangling at the end of a thread of silk in the breeze before briefly landing on me.

Likely a juvenile from genus Philodroma, the running crab spiders, & perhaps either P. albidus (🇩🇪 Heller Flachstrecker or P. dispar (🇩🇪 Zweifarbflachstrecker).

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Mark McCaughrean

As for this one, it's very likely an ichneumon wasp, but being more specific within that huge family is difficult.

There are 3,600 species in Germany alone, so narrowing it down is tough. There's a very similar picture shown for Hercus fontinalis on Wikipedia, but in other pictures, it looks quite different.

Any wasp experts in the house?

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