Date first recorded in the Garden: 07/08/2023
Family Tephritida
A large family of flies, which along with the Family Drosophilidae, are known as the Fruit Flies. Tephritida also go by the name Peacock Flies according to Wikipedia, on account of their patterned wings. Most members of this family are phytophagus (feed on plants) with some monophagus, only feeding on a single plant species. Currently there are around 5,000 described species in the world.
Anomoia purmunda
Note how this species holds it’s wings in the image above. It holds them with the top sides facing forward, making this small insect appear larger than it is, and one assumes thats the point. This odd behaviour was what caught our eye when we first spotted this insect darting across an apple leaf.
The wing pattern is very distinctive in this species according to online sources, so a good image should allow you to identify it to species level. The image below better shows this its pattern.
Sadly it was very fast and quickly flew off so we were unable to get a very good image. But if you google this species and check out some of the much better images online, you will also see it has a hortizontal green line across each eye.
In the Garden
The larva of this species eat Hawthorn, not a plant we have in the Garden, although we did once try to grow some cuttings (which failed over the 2022/23 winter). So it is likely this individual was just passing through. We would still like to grow hawthorn as it is attractive to a range of native species and if so perhaps we will see more of this relatively common (in the South of the UK) species.
Wildlife Garden 