Tuesday 21 July 2015

Mystery Fly

I regularly have to change the water in Penny's outside water dish as all sorts of bugs keep using it as their personal swimming pool. Most are too small to be a problem but some larger specimens need to be removed before Penny enjoys an unexpected extra added meat flavour to her water.

This evening this beauty was doing an imitation of a doggy paddle:

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I don't remember having seen this type of fly before and its identification is evading me at the moment. Size is about the same as a hive honey bee, about 9mm long. Its large eyes, thick legs and colouring ought to make it easy to identify but Google isn't helping one little bit this evening, even when I uploaded a photo to help.


Addendum
I tweeted a photo to Africa Gómez at Hull Uni who writes Bug Blog. She suggests it is probably a honey bee. The give away being the enlarged rear femur where they carry pollen.

6 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Adrian: I've looked at hundreds of photos of flies, bees, wasps and others and not one came anywhere near to it.

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    2. Same here but I have found one of my don't knows. It is bad enough getting the blighters in focus but identifying them is harder,. This is so distinctive one would think it would be easy.

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    3. Adrian: I've tweeted a photo to the bug lady at Hull Uni to see if she can help.

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    4. Very fast reply from Africa Gómez. She thinks it's probably a honey bee because of the enlarged rear femur for pollen collecting.

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    5. It looked a bit shiny but it was the nearest I found.

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Thank you for visiting. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Any comment, or correction to any information or identification I get wrong, is most welcome. John

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