Calligraphy in the prairie

  

Eric spotted these tiny flies hovering among the grasses in a coastal prairie site up in Mendocino County on 11 September 2022.  Although they were quite small, when they landed it was easy to appreciate the beautiful colors and patterning on their abdomens and the light reflections in their wings.

We don't have experience with this group of flies, but our best guess right now is that they are Margined Calligraphers (Toxomerus marginatus). 

A couple more views:

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Eric for his excellent fly-spotting!  

 

What a fly!

  

Wow, what a fly!  I had to do some work in the dunes today.  As I was walking back I noticed this fly landing on the sand.  Even from a distance the colors looked interesting, so I bent down for a closer look.  Such beautiful metallic purple and copper coloration!  [You can click on the image for a larger version.]

I think this is a type of bee fly (Bombyliidae), but I'm not sure which species.  If you have any bee fly contacts that could help with an identification, let me know. 

Red-eyed

  

We were leaving for work this morning when Eric spotted this interesting fly on the door to our house.

It looks like it's probably a type of hover fly (Syrphidae), but I'm not sure which species.

The large red eyes were striking!

 

 

 Here's another view in case someone can help with an identification:

 

 

 

P.S.  Can you hear the excuse now?  "Really...I was late to work today because of a fly."  Do you think that would fly?  ;) 

What?

Recently I was trying to photograph some very small bees.  When I'm doing this, I'm often following the blur of a bee in flight.  I can't see any detail; I just try to follow the bee until it lands and then focus the lens.

This time I was surprised.  First, because this one turned out to be a fly, not a bee.  And second, because the fly started to oviposit (lay eggs) in a Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) leaf!  What?

 

In the photo above, the fly has curled her abdomen tip down into the leaf.  This is a classic egg-laying position for many insects.

Here's what she looked like with her abdomen extended:

 

I don't think I've noticed a fly ovipositing in a leaf before, but then again, I don't think I've ever tried to find one doing it, either.

 

On the nature of pappus

I need to correct a mistake in last night's post.  I called the Coyote Brush flowers male, but I've realized now that the flowers in last night's photo are female (and I've corrected that post).

I'm not a botanist, so I hope you will forgive my mistake...and perhaps you can learn with me.  Here's what happened.  I had remembered that in Coyote Brush, male and female flowers occur on separate plants.  But when I took the picture that I showed last night, I couldn't remember how to tell the different types of flowers apart.  So I looked around for clues and found this:

 

I said, "Okay, I can see that the shorter yellowish flowers are producing pappus."  Pappus is the white fluffy material that (often) carries seeds.  [When you blow seeds off a dandelion, you're blowing on the pappus (with a seed at the bottom) which then floats away.]  

Until now, I have associated pappus with seeds, which are produced by female flowers, so I thought these shorter yellowish flowers were female.  And I reasoned that therefore the longer whitish flowers (in last night's photo) were male.

Then today I noticed a lot of insect activity around some Coyote Brush plants — e.g., here's a nice fly (and an ant), feeding on white flowers.

 

When I looked closely, I realized that there was pappus associated with the white flowers (see below for an example):

 

So now I realized I had a problem.  A few days ago I had noticed pappus on yellow flowers, and today I observed pappus on white flowers.  So...which flowers are male and which are female?

I had to do some more research, and discovered that the white flowers are female and the yellow flowers are male.  They *both* produce pappus, but note that the pappus is longer in the females and shorter in the males.

I hadn't realized that some male flowers produce pappus, but now I know, and you do, too! 

Since pappus is associated with seeds and can play a role in seed dispersal, it raises the question of why male flowers also produce pappus?  I don't know the answer, but let me know if you've heard of an explanation (or can think of one!).

Here are two more pictures: a closeup of male Coyote Brush flowers, and a handsome striped fly on a male flower:

 

 

Solar-powered

Air temperatures in Bodega Bay reached ~56°F (~13°C) this afternoon.  After a week of rain, it seemed like a lot of insects were taking advantage of the sun today:

 

Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta)

 

Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus)

 

Variegated Meadowhawk (Sympetrum corruptum)

 

Unidentified fly (Let me know if you recognize it!)

ADDENDUM (12 February 2017): One of the suggestions I received about the fly in this post was that it could be a hover fly.  I did a quick image search, and noticed a similar-looking hover fly here.  I don't think it's the same species (based on the abdominal patterning), but it's very close, and I think it's likely the fly in the picture above is in the same family (Syrphidae).

Then I skimmed some information about syrphid flies, and learned that sometimes they eat aphids.  In the field I had noticed that these flies were spending a lot of time around the tips of the Monterey Cypress.  I wondered about what they were doing there (i.e., what was attracting them to those sites).  Well, I went back and reviewed my photos and it looks like there might be tiny aphids on the cypress tips!  Check it out — and note the arrow pointing to one of the possible aphids: