Sciomyzid Fly

Sciomyzid fly Coremacera marginata (Diptera: Sciomyzidae).

Photo taken in the field below Chazey Wood, near Caversham, UK, on 2011-07-02.

Hoverfly

A black hoverfly covered if fine white hairs and with dark patches on its wings.  A male Pipiza sp, probably either P. austriaca, P. lugubris or P. noctiluca (Diptera: Syrphidae).

Photos taken in Whiteknights Park, Reading University Grounds, Reading, UK, on 2011-6-13.

Horsefly

Horsefly Haematopota pluvialis (Diptera: Tabanidae).  The bane of my walks of late: buzzing around and settling on my trouser legs but occasionally landing on my hands and giving quite a painful bite.  Even on the warmest days I wear a long-sleeved rugby shirt to protect my arms from these little pests!

Photos taken in Whiteknights Park, Reading University grounds, Reading, UK, on 2011-07-04.

State Transfer

From Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures, the PhD dissertation of Roy T. Fielding, page 109 (2000):

"The name “Representational State Transfer” is intended to evoke an image of how a well-designed Web application behaves: a network of web pages (a virtual state-machine), where the user progresses through the application by selecting links (state transitions), resulting in the next page (representing the next state of the application) being transferred to the user and rendered for their use."

Thus, it is the state of the whole application that is being transferred in REST, not the state of particular resources as suggested here.

Ichneumon Wasp

An ichneumon wasp checking out a caterpillar of the cinnabar moth, Tyria jacobaeae (Lepidoptera: Arctiidae), presumably as a potential host for an egg.  This time the caterpillar was lucky and the wasp flew away after the caterpillar waved its head about a bit.

The wasp looks similar to this one I photographed a few days ago checking out a caterpillar of the moth Depressaria daucella.  I suspect they both might be member of the Anomaloninae (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae).  See here for further pictures of this group.

Photo taken in the field below Chazey Wood, near Caversham, UK, on 2011-007-02.