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Eristalis pertinax (Scopoli, 1763)

Identification

Identification difficulty = 1. according to Ball & Morris, 2024¹

Biology

The larva is of the 'long-tailed', aquatic type and occurs in a wide range of situations where wet, decaying vegetable matter accumulates, including wet manure heaps in farmyards. Adults are usually found visiting flowers such as flowering shrubs, white umbels, yellow composites and brambles Rubus sp., and are frequent visitors to gardens. Males often hover in sun-lit rides and can be very abundant in the spring.

Flight period

The following plots show the number of unique records per week that were not reported to be of eggs, larvae or pupae.

Distribution

One of the commonest species throughout Britain. It has a very long season and is one of the commonest early spring species as well as one of the most abundant on ivy flowers at the end of the season.

Trends

The following plots show the Frescalo TFactor vs year and a map of the rescaled frequency (all records) for the species. For an explanation see here.