Dog at the seaside

A trip to the beach at Lancing today. Petra enjoys investigating the vegetation. 

The most common plant is the sea-kale.

But the horned poppy is here in numbers too.

It is very popular with the hover-flies as you can see on the right.

This form of ragwort is also easy to find.I think it is hoary ragwort.The enlarged picture shows the grey down all over.

And a stunted form of bittersweet is flowering well.

Both of these are attractive to the hoverflies too. It's difficult to take a picture without a hoverfly in it! The last two flies shown are the migrant hoverfly - eupeodes corollae. The one on the horned poppy is episyrphus balteatus - the marmalade hoverfly. All three are females and both species are flies that migrate to England from the continent - which is probably why they are here on the beach! Just arrived?