Saturday, June 02, 2007

Long-Legged Fly

I thought this dolichopodid, or Long-Legged Fly, was well-named to follow Blue-Eyed Grass. I've often admired these small flies, but I had wrongly assumed they were some sort of gnat, related to the midges, mosquitoes, and crane flies. My field guide tells me the Dolichopodidae are related to the tabanids and rhagionids, or snipe flies.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

i haven't the interest (nor the skill, nor the desire to develop the skill) to sit out side, and wait for a fly to rest on a leaf or blade of glass, to look up the species..

but i love it.. i love knowing that there are thousand of different fly's and that others care, and that if i need to, i have a place i can reference the information.

(my own knowledge of flora is pretty strictly limited to what grew in my garden (when i had one) and what grows in NYC --i learned lots about plants haunting NYC's Botanical gardens as a child and young adult--i used to surprize my children by pointing out the preying mantis egg cases (i always could find at least one) and teaching them to watch till it burst forth--and then watching the mantis grow!)

thanks for these wonderful post!

Anonymous said...

Hey, you're getting good with this!

Rebecca Clayton said...

Thanks for looking! The littlest critters are my favorites.

If I were sitting outside, waiting for flies, looking up names, my posts would be few and far between. I actually take whatever shows up, and, most of the time, if I don't know what it is, I have a good guess about where to look in my taxonomy books.

In other words, I don't start at the beginnig of the key to plant families of West Virginia. I think, "Hmmm...looks caprifoiaceous to me. Check honeysuckle first."

After all, I was a trained professional once. I've been looking close for a long time. Now I'm having even more fun with my "Hey, look at this!" posts.

Anonymous said...

very beatiful photo :)