Hoverfly on great blue lobelia
Syrphidae
Hoverfly · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 19 August 2026
A hoverfly on great blue lobelia in the August border, a native relative of cardinal flower that swaps the hummingbird-red tube for cool blue-violet and, unlike its red cousin, is happy to be worked by bees and other short-tongued visitors. It is a plant of wet meadows across the East.
Small, with a narrow yellow-and-black abdomen: probably one of the Toxomerus flower flies, the commonest of the tiny hoverflies in the garden, wasp-patterned for protection it doesn't actually need.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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