Blue-bottle Calliphora vomitoria, please?

Dillybythesea · #1 (**permalink**) 07-05-2011, 03:32 PM

Having taken pics of this large (unperturbed!) blue-bottle, say 13mm, I googled IDs and eventually came upon this in the NHM website >

Also common is the rural bluebottle Calliphora vomitoria, which can be easily distinguished from C. vicina by the conspicuous covering of orange hairs on the occiput.

And having googled occiput, I'm thinking this pic has pale hairs, so can I safely label it Calliphora vomitoria, or is there something I've overlooked, please?!

Jason Green · #2 (**permalink**) 07-05-2011, 04:10 PM

Afternoon Rhona,

No, I'd say this was Calliphora sp., probably C. vicina. I believe vomitoria has orange hairs under the rear-side of the head which this appears to lack.

I'm actually not too sure what they mean about the 'orange occiput' being used in their ID!

Take care,

Jason

Dillybythesea · #3 (**permalink**) 07-05-2011, 05:02 PM

Evening Jason! So not even blue-bottles are straightforward, groan!

And I'm not sure if I'm looking for orange hairs in the wrong place, or looking in the right place but seeing a few, whereas I'd need to see loads, and no black ones.

To locate the 'occiput' I found this diagram >

http://www.earthlife.net/insects/ima.../head-side.gif

and thought that (in the apparent absence of a 'gena', because of the size of the eye?) there did seem to be a ring of hairs around the back of the eye where they arrowed 'occiput' - and including, I thought, some blonde/ orange ones.

So wrong place, or wrong colour, please?!