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Not Your Average Lookin' Fly
The feather-legged fly looks as if it were formed by a committee.
It's about the size of a house fly, but there the similarity ends.
Black head and thorax, hind legs fringed with a "comb" of short black hairs, and an abdomen that's the color of honey--bright orange honey.
It's one of those insects that prompts folks (including many entomologists) to ask: "What's THAT?"
We took a photo of "what's THAT?" yesterday on a Yolo County farm. Native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis, identified it as family Tachinidae, genus Tichopoda and species, probably T. pennipes.
It's a parasitoid. The female lays her eggs inside squash bugs, stink bugs and other agricultural pests.
It was probably introduced here from Europe. Squash growers and other farmers employ it as a biological control agent.
To us, it appears to be a double agent: distinctive and deadly.
Don't let that honey-colored abdomen fool you...
Distinctively colored tachinid fly, probably Trichopoda pennipes, on Santolina rosmarinifolia. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
View from above of Trichopoda pennipes on Santolina rosmarinifolia. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Golden abdomen of a Trichopoda pennipes. Note the fringed legs. The fly is on Santolina rosmarinifolia. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Seeing Red
The first thing you notice about the fly is its brilliant red eyes.
They stand out like the proverbial elephant in the room.
But they are on a fly--a flesh fly.
Martin Hauser, an associate insect biosytematist in the Plant Pest Diagnostics Branch, California Department of Food and Agriculture, identified this little critter as a member of the Sarcophagidae family.
"Sarco" is Greek for flesh, and "phage" means eating.
Hauser, who earned his doctorate in entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is skilled at identifying insects. And he speaks German, French and English and studied Latin.
The red-eyed fly, which in its larval stage is associated with decaying flesh, sipped a little nectar and then paused momentarily to groom itself.
And pose for the camera.
Flesh Fly
Grooming
A Fly By
What's a fly doing there?
Just soaking up the sun.
A fly that landed on one of the two colorfully painted beehive columns that grace the entrance to the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven at the University of California, Davis, seemed like part of the scene.
The haven, a half-acre bee friendly garden planted next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road, draws many a visitor--and many an insect. It is open year around.
We spotted this fly next to a painting of a honey bee in flight.
It knows a good spot when it sees one.
Between the Branches
Fly By
The Bug Stops Here
President Obama caught a little flak when he smacked a fly during a recent press interview in the White House.
During the interview, a pesky fly buzzed around his head and then landed on his hand. Big mistake. The commander-in-chief nailed him.
The bug stopped there. "I got the sucker," he said.
That prompted the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to protest the fly "execution."
What?
And now YouTube, Facebook, My Space, the bloggers and the tweeters are all getting into the act.
The President killed a fly.
He did.
So have I.
To be honest, I'm not one to participate in a catch-and-release program.
However, I do photograph them occasionally. See, there's this forensic entomologist at UC Davis named Robert Kimsey who shows fly images in his PowerPoints.
Last weekend I photographed a blow fly that landed on my pink-petaled cosmos. Did it for Bob. Honest.
Surely it's true that "You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar" but frankly, I wouldn't waste the honey. Or the vinegar. Or the time. And why would I want to catch flies anyway? The fly is not my favorite pollinator. It's a notorious disease transmitter.
Still, it can be pretty in pink.
Got the sucker.
Blow Fly on Cosmos
The Shadow Knows
Fly by Day
UC Davis forensic entomologist Robert Kimsey loves flies.
So, every chance I get, I shoot an image for him.
Many of the images wind up in his classroom PowerPoint presentations.
"Keep 'em coming," he says.
So, I shoot flies. Yes, indeed. I shoot flies. No, I am not a candidate for a 12-step program. Well, not yet.
Truth is, we think of flies as noxious. We don't think of flies as having parts like a head, abdomen and thorax--or compound eyes, arista, antenna, prescutum, scutum, scutellum, balancer and mesothorax.
They do, though.
Alive or dead.
And some are even pretty--especially when they're touching down on delicate pink blossoms.
Pretty in Pink?
Close-up
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