Humming birdy-not-hawk-moth?!?!?

[Tauro]

Hi,

I have just joined here so "hi" to everybody!

Without boring you, as I know I can, I am a fly-fisher. Whilst fishing on Sunday on open still water in East Sussex, I noticed a proliferation of what looked at first like baby hummingbird hawk moths (I regularly get these forcing their needle-thin probosci into my purple fingered buddleia flowers in summer) flitting between primrose clusters on the bank.

After taking a closer look, (they were not timid insects!) they appeared to be mainly amber/dark gold coloured with a darker bum and with a very small separate head segment and a fairly stout black proboscis about the same length of the body. The wings were essentially invisible and they had the same agility and speed as is characteristic with this type of insect.

So...what the hell was it?

Any light that can be shed on this gratefully received!

Tauro

[Lance Morgan]

Bee-fly, Bombylius major

[Jason Green]

Afternoon Tauro, and welcome to WAB!

These will [very!] most likely to have been Bee-flies, which are flies not bees. They will have been looking for the nesting holes of bees from the family Andrenidae as they lay their eggs nearby - the subsequent larvae will find and predate the larvae of the Andrena spp.

Can you remember/draw the wing pattern/ we should then be able to identify your fly to species-level, hopefully. The most common is Bombylius major with the others less so, but hard to say which without.

Take care,

Jason

[-carrie-]

Hey I'm also new... was just trying to find out what I'd seen and looks like it was 1 of these googled it for pic and am pretty certain...

[Jason Green]

Afternoon Carrie, and welcome to WAB!

Yes, I'm sure it was probably one too. Can you remember the wing pattern? That should help us get it to species-level for you. Particularly look at Bombylius major (taxonomic name) which is our most common. If it isn't that we'll have a re-think

[-carrie-]

I couldn't teel you to be honest as it was fying and I couldn't see the wings. I'd just happened to turn around and there it was hovering.

[Jason Green]

Ah, OK. Well, it's most likely (but not definately) to have been B. major then - the most widespread species of the family.

[SteveF48]

I've posted several images of bee flies in the library.
For example:

and

I can verify that they do fly very close and inspect you, fortunately they are completely harmless, otherwise they could have your eye out with those probosci (Is that the plural of proboscis?).

[Tauro]

[quote=SteveF48;614493]I've posted several images of bee flies in the library.
For example:


Firstly, thanks to everybody for your feedback. I'm very grateful.

Jason, sadly I didn't get the wing pattern, I also now realise that they didn't have dark bums either...they just had "dark" on them other than the gold and I would say that they were dead ringers of the picture Steve provided here...thanks Steve!

I'll try and get some further detail next time I see one...which will hopefully be soon, as I plan to spend another day trying to outwit trout this weekend...

Kindest regards,

T.

[SteveF48]

I posted 7 images in total in this thread: Unidentified Bombylius species
There seems to be a great deal of variation in the colours and body markings.