Animal

Country diary: the hawthorn blossom is alive with shiny black feverflies


The hedges north of Titchmarsh village are white with hawthorn blossom. Shiny black flies clamber over the sprays, licking nectar from the flowers. Feverflies are abundant but easily overlooked; as diminutive as a mosquito, but silent, these unobtrusive flies are one of the most important pollinators of fruit trees. They play no role in spreading disease, so why in 1758 Linnaeus gave the name febrilis to the most abundant of our four species in the Dilophus genus is unknown.

The Titchmarsh flies are not the common feverfly but the milky-winged feverfly (D femoratus), distinguished by the arrangement of spines on the foreleg and slightly opaque wings. The sexes could easily be taken to be different species: the purely black male has a thin, tubular abdomen and big spherical head, surfaced with compound eyes; the female has a bowed abdomen, a small head with modest eyes and amber patches on her forelegs.

Lurking in the hawthorn foliage is a chief predator of feverflies, the red-legged robberfly (Dioctria rufipes). Long-bodied with grappling legs, crouched and alert, pointed antennae erect, his hemispherical eye-covered head held high and sporting a moustache of white bristles, he sits, waits and ambushes flies and parasitic wasps that stray too close.

Titchmarsh hawthorn



The hawthorn foliage hides a feverfly predator, the red-legged robberfly
(Dioctria rufipes).
Photograph: Matt Shardlow

The Titchmarsh Meadow site of special scientific interest (SSSI) is disappointing. SSSIs were devised in 1949, when the pursuit of knowledge was an end in itself, to protect in perpetuity a selection of the most scientifically interesting natural features in Britain. They have become the backbone of wildlife conservation; comparatively unmolested, they retain biodiverse habitats that have been lost where unprotected.

SSSIs kindle most of my country diaries: they can be astonishing and uplifting (Baston Fen) or wrenchingly degraded (Goss Moor). The government is supposed to regularly check the condition of SSSIs and report that back to us. The last time Titchmarsh Meadow was checked was a decade ago, when the officer declared that the once floristically rich marsh was “unfavourable” due to “lack of corrective works – inappropriate weed control”. I can report that these old carp ponds remain in dire straits – dry, ungrazed and rank, with no orchids to be seen.



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