WILDLIFE experts who visited a Blackbird Leys primary school have been left scratching their heads after youngsters discovered a rare insect.

Tia Mungai, Sharon Igwe and Elaina Koshy, all aged 11, were among Pegasus Primary Schools pupils taking part in a 'bio-blitz' event at the school.

Under the watchful eye of environmental consultancy Bioscan the three were taking part in a race to find the most species of animals, plants and fungi on the school grounds when they made the exciting discovery: a Dotted Bee-fly, which has not been seen anywhere near Oxford for more than 60 years.

The fly looks like a bumblebee but sips nectar from flowers using an extremely long tongue and is uncommon anywhere in the UK.

After the group bundled their find into a plastic wallet, Sharon said: "It was vibrating in the bag and we thought it was going to sting us."

Dominic Woodfield of Bioscan said: "To be honest, we expected to be working through a lot of daisies, slugs, snails and woodlice and not much else.

"But about half-way through the day Tia came up to me with a bee-fly she’d caught in a document wallet. I could see it wasn’t the common species often seen in gardens. "But it was only a bit later after a second look that I began to realise we had something rather special. It just shows how rarities can turn up anywhere."