Inundated

I knew this day would come. After months of winter with rarely a trace of an insect outdoors among the snowdrifts, suddenly there are dozens and dozens of insect species flying about. I'm inundated. Just a few days into spring and I can't keep up. From now on each day's record reflects a choice and a focus, a few select observations excluding hundreds of other possible subjects.

For instance, today I saw several warbler-like birds in the trees but didn't run for the binoculars or telephoto lens. I saw three different kinds of butterflies in the yard but didn't give chase. Why? I was intent upon the mining bees and nomad bees that had showed up in the backyard. Then, while patiently waiting for these bees to land within range of my camera, I was further distracted and turned my attention from them for a while because the first syrphid fly of the season landed near my ear on the trunk of the ash tree.

How fitting that the very day my copy of The Secret Life of Flies by Erica McAlister arrived in the mail, a large syrphid fly arrived as well. This fly, Brachypalpus oarus, is a species I've never encountered before. Jeff Skevington who is working on the Field Guide to Northeastern Nearctic Flower Flies has given lively common names to the flies. This particular species gets the name Eastern Catkin Fly. Several sources suggest this fly is a bee mimic, resembling somewhat a large mason bee or a large mining bee. To me, however, it looks more like a robber fly, but that would make it a mimic of a mimic, a mimic once removed. In its maggothood, this fly would have lived in a rot hole of an old deciduous tree, some little pool of water high above ground.

Posted on April 18, 2017 03:54 AM by scottking