Tag Archive | flies

First Robber Flies of the season!

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This morning, on another dog walk at Mt. Tolmie, I came upon my first Robber Fly of the year. It was perched on a closed Camas bloom, which wasn’t very pleasing, so I nudged it onto some other substrates. Because it was a cool and wet day, the robber obliged and did not flee. I do not know what species it is, but it looks to be a small male Laphria, which are known as the “Bee-like Robber Flies”. The Robber Flies )Family Asilidae) are some of my favourites, as they are often showy, have spectacular predation behaviour and can turn their heads to track flying prey!

After shooting the fly on several different backgrounds, I put him on an oak twig, figuring it would be a good place to catch the sun and warm up. To my surprise, a second male robber was perched on the very next twig! Please enjoy the following  pictures responsibly, and if you have a fly-gasm, try to muffle yourself if you are in public.

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Of course the robbers were not the only flies out there:

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relatives of the Asilidae are the Empidae, or Dance Flies.

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a wet Calliphorid

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A Tipulid in the grass

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On the subject of Tipulids, check out this spectacular male Tiger Crane Fly I found yesterday!

 

 

 

High speed Fly Takeoff

We had a representative of High Speed imaging Inc. in the lab today to demonstrate some high speed cameras…So what did we record? Some blowflies of course!

Check out how these awesome flies take off:

We have used high speed cameras before, but this one was pretty impressive. This video was recorded at 4000 frames per second, and is slowed down to 30, so it is about 133 times slower than real life. No wonder they are so hard to catch!