17 Tuesday Jan 2023
Posted in insects
Another day, another summer fly. This one, from last May, is a little bristly beauty called Nemorilla floralis, whose name means something like ‘little visitor to the flowery glade’ (according to a tweet by @ivysuckle). Unfortunately, this fly doesn’t live up to its pretty name as it’s a parasitoid, laying its eggs in the living larvae of various micro moths and butterflies.
16 Monday Jan 2023
Posted in insects
I was going through my ‘pending’ photos and realised how many images I have from last summer that never got posted, just because each day’s walk in the warmer weather often produces several potential blog subjects. So, while we wait for the weather to improve, I’ll share the occasional 2022 find. And here’s one I’m sure many of you have seen as it has a very wide distribution – meet the Yellow dung fly (Scatophaga stercoraria). The etymology of its scientific name explains this little creature’s preferred habitat: Scatophaga comes from the Greek skatophagos, from skat-, skōr excrement and phagein to eat, and stercoraria is from the Medieval Latin stercorarium meaning toilet (stercorary is an archaic name for a place [e.g. a covered pit] for the storage of manure secure from the weather) (Merrian-Webster Dictionary). So, Scatophaga stercoraria is the dung eater from the dung pit.
03 Thursday Nov 2022
Posted in insects
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And just like that yesterday’s cute little fly has a name, Acletoxenus formosus, thanks to a fellow biodiversity recorder, Graham. Amazingly, my sighting appears to be just the second record of this species in Wales, though I’m sure that’s due to the fact that it’s under-recorded because of its tiny size, rather than because of its rarity. Once I knew its name, I was able to find a short video of its trademark sideways shuffle, thanks to wildlife photographer and enthusiast Phil Booker, who also gives a bit more information about the fly in the description box of his video.
02 Wednesday Nov 2022
Posted in insects
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Silly me thinking that this tiny fly was so distinctively marked that it would be easy to identify. It may be part of the Chloropidae family of flies but then again it may not. I think it’s a shame the online resources for fly identification are so limited or require a degree of familiarity with the various fly families that the lay person simply doesn’t have. It certainly doesn’t encourage more people to become interested in flies, yet they can be such visually attractive little creatures.
25 Wednesday May 2022
Posted in insects
This snipe fly (possibly Rhagio scolopaceus) came to sit on my hand while I was watching butterflies flit about in a field, and then posed nicely for photos. I wondered if it was my skin cream that had attracted it – it’s described as coconut, which means, to local insects, I smell like a walking Gorse bush. But then a Twitter friend replied to my post with a photo of the same species of snipe fly perched on his Tesco-washing-powder-smelling shirt, which blew my theory out the water. Maybe snipe flies just like hitching a ride.
20 Wednesday Oct 2021
Posted in insects
Meet a Moth fly, or an Owl midge, or a Drain fly, or an Owl fly, a tiny creature that has a multitude of common names but whose 99 British species are so difficult to identify that I can’t give you an exact scientific name for this particular one, except to say that it’s a member of the Psychodidae family.
I was actually amazed that it stayed relatively still long enough for me to get so many photos – perhaps the cooler temperature this day had reduced its ability to flit actively about. Not so good for the fly, but a bonus for the photographer.
23 Monday Aug 2021
Posted in insects
I’m walking along a field path at Cosmeston when I feel a light touch on my arm. Before I even look down, I know what it is as this has happened to me often this summer. It’s a picture-winged fly, probably Herina lugubris, dancing along my bare skin, flashing its wings as it goes. It tickles!
03 Thursday Dec 2020
Posted in insects, leaves, plants, wildflowers
Tags
Acidia cognata, British flies, leaf mines, leaf-mining fly larvae, leaf-mining larvae, leafminer, Petasites fragrans, Winter heliotrope
Though the UK Fly mines website says the leaf mines of the little orange fly Acidia cognata are made in October-November, I’m sure the mines will still be visible this month, and possibly further into the winter, so this is one to look out for now when you’re out walking.
One of the plants this fly mines – this is the one I’ve found these mines on – is Winter heliotrope (Petasites fragrans), which is particularly noticeable now, due to the pretty pink flowers that appear from November to February. Other favoured larval plants are Butterbur (Petasites hybridus), a plant very similar to Winter heliotrope, and Colt’s-foot (Tussilago farfara), the leaves of which don’t appear till after the flowers, so approximately from April onwards.
After hatching, the Acidia cognata larvae create a corridor on the upper surface of the leaf. As the larvae grow, the mine widens and eventually becomes more of a blotch, especially if there are several larvae on a single leaf and their mines meet. I’ve found these mines in two local patches of Winter heliotrope but not found any sign of them in other locations, so distribution does seem a little random. If you spot any, please do record your sightings as, like many leaf-miners where the adult flies are not often seen, this species is probably under-recorded.
10 Tuesday Sep 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, insects, nature
Flies are fascinating!
This bristle-backed orange-and-black beauty, Tachina fera, is commonly seen in Wales and England any time between May and October. These flies produce two broods over the summer months but their life cycle is perhaps not what you might think. Like almost 300 other fly species in Britain, these are parasitoids – the eggs they lay on plant leaves hatch as larvae that burrow their way inside the bodies of other larvae, the caterpillars of several species of moth, which they then proceed to eat to death. It’s a larvae-eat-larvae world out there, folks.
05 Sunday Aug 2018
At first glance I thought this big brute was a hoverfly, ’cause I know there are some very large hoverflies, but one look at those eyes told me otherwise. Meet Tachina grossa, the largest Tachnid fly in Britain and Europe.
As you can see, it feeds on pollen and nectar and, though it’s harmless to us humans, it’s no friend of moths. The female Tachina grossa lays her eggs on living larvae, in particular the large hairy caterpillars of the Oak eggar moth and the Fox moth. The fly larvae eat the caterpillars from the inside, eventually but not immediately killing them.
So, it may look kind of cute in the photograph below but I’m just glad I’m not a large hairy caterpillar.
earthstar 
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