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From summer in my garden...

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2

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Syrphus vitripennis or Syrphus ribesii. Impossible to tell apart these 2 (when they are males) from pictures.

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With this lighting and background, can't exclude S. torvus either...

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Thanks Stephane & Andre....Syrphus sp. Male it will remain.

What's the problem with the lighting Andre? I've just got a new Laptop and the picture looks OK to me, haven't seen it on another computer screen. Photo was taken in a shaded area of the garden on French Marigolds, not in some studio where you can "arrange" lighting and background colouring.
And is as near as damn it to being in focus on the relevant bits for torvus which I don't think this is, unless the eye-hairs are (extremely) miniscule ????

Regards Roger

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Andre is right.
Difficult to exclude S. torvus with this picture. More I see something like hairs in lower part of eye, but not clearly;(
So only Syrphus sp.

Lukasz

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Thank you Lukasz...found some more pics....don't know if they are of use or not....

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another

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last chance...

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It's not enough better than previous
If realy want you can send me picture in full resolution
lukasz@insects.pl

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Roger, the problem is not your computer, but the background of the fly. Only picture #7 has a better background on the left. This tends to make me think it is S. torvus, but like Lukasz says... Ah, don't bother Roger, this species is supercommon, just like ribesii and vitripennis. Who cares....

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Might be supercommon in your neck-of-the-woods Andre, on the little collection of rocks in the middle of the North Sea / Atlantic where I live they are a migrant species, and last year I saw only about 12 Syrphus sp. compared with hundreds the previous year. We had some long spells of good weather here compared with the UK Mainland where i presume these breed, so no reason for them not to be active and spotted. We might get some from Norway too as it is less than a couple of hundred miles away. So I assume there must have been some problem or other that cut the numbers. If so then a couple of bad years breeding or whatever for a supercommon species, then you too might be glad to catch one on camera.

Roger