114 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2019
LAST WORD
Flying Tigers
Both pollinators and predators of pests, darting hoverflies with their delicate,
striped, jewel-like forms make welcome visitors to Katherine Swift’s gardenILLUSTRATIONJULIA RIGBYPORTRAITRICHARD BLOOMI
t has been a bumper year for greenfl y. But
I am pretty relaxed about it. I don’t spray, I
just leave the job to the hoverfl ies. In late
summer I love to watch them feeding on the
Michaelmas daisies, the whole patch like
a microscopic city airport, with wings fl ashing in
the sunshine, as if hundreds of helicopters from all
points of the compass were taking o and landing
all at once. They are such captivating creatures.
There are 276 species of hoverfl y in Britain. In a
suburban garden you might expect to fi nd anything
from a few dozen up to about 80, depending upon
the fl ora. Yet inexplicably they have no common
names – only a few generic nicknames, like the
black-and-yellow ‘tiger’ hoverfl y and the orange-
striped ‘marmalade’ variety. Are they too small?
Too many? Too fast?
Their wings are transparent, a blur, beating many
times per second, but their bodies are like shards
of Lalique glass or fragments of cloisonné: black-
and-yellow or brown-and-yellow, tawny, orange
or gold, in a dazzling array of lines, stripes, and
zigzags. The patterns deter predators, for, having
no sting, hoverfl ies mimic insects that do, such as
bumblebees, honeybees, hornets and wasps.
They themselves are classifi ed as fl ies. They
have a single pair of wings rather than the double
pairs sported by bees and wasps, and this is what
enables them to hover. And as
well as hovering, they can fl y
backwards and even sideways –
darting, shimmering, constantly
in motion. Some species even mate
in the air. The males are constantly
on the qui vive, guarding favoured
spots against intruders. Even when
at rest, they keep fl exing their wing
muscles; this causes the thorax to
vibrate, and the vibration is transmitted
to the leaf surface, which acts like a
sounding board, giving rise to their
characteristic high-pitched whine.
The adults feed on pollen and
nectar, making them useful pollinators,
particularly of fruit trees. But it is
the larvae that are especially useful to
gardeners. They are voracious consumers
of aphids, and, to a lesser extent, other soft-bodied
pests such as scale insects, thrips and leaf-hoppers.
How to attract them in to the garden? The adults
lack the long probing tongues of bees, so they
need their dinner on a plate: fl owers with nectar
and pollen that are easy to get at. So in spring and
early summer this means umbellifers like roadside
cow parsley and hogweed, and garden herbs such
as angelica, parsley and dill; later they will make
a beeline for members of the daisy family, such
as chrysanthemums, marigolds, echinacea, and
Michaelmas daisies. Then, in early autumn, they
seek out the strange green umbels of mature ivy, the
last great food source of the year – a magnet also for
clouds of bees and other fl ying insects.
Why do we fail to give these beautiful and
fascinating creatures more attention? You will look
in vain for more than a passing mention of hoverfl ies
in general wildlife books. But there is a book about
hoverfl ies which, against all the odds, became an
international best-seller. The Fly Trap, by Fredrik
Sjöberg, written originally in Swedish and translated
into English in 2014, tells the story of a young man’s
escape from the city and his immersion in the nature
of one small o -shore island. Encompassing memoir,
travel, natural history and biography, it is about
‘islands, summer, and fi nding happiness in small
things’. The perfect summer read. ■“
Hoverflies’
bodies are
like shards
of Lalique
glass or
fragments
of cloisonné”