This rather cute little fella, going by the name Celery Fly is a picture wing fruit fly, and is also known as the Hogweed Picture Wing Fly.
The striking blue/green eyes, if you can collect an image at a good angle, are a nice feature of this already attractive fly. According to several online sources the larvae feed by mining the leaves of Celery and Hogweed (as their English names suggest) but also Parsnips and other related plants. As far as we know we don’t have any of these plants in our garden so this guy was likely just visiting.
The thorax and abdomen colour alternates between the Spring/Summer and Late Summer/Autumn populations of this species. Our example here shows the brown/orange colour of the spring cohort, where as later in the year this would be black.
Probably not a species we need to encourage in the Garden, most likely they have better places to be such as the numerous allotments or the wetland habitats nearby. We can just enjoy their visits from time to time.
DC-19/10/2022
Wildlife Garden 