Thickheadedness, redux

August 01, 2018  •  Leave a Comment

Last year, towards the end of summer, I spotted the strangest of wasp mimics in the Assekonk Swamp while I was teaching middle schoolers about the natural world. I thought the critter we were watching—nervously... some of the kids weren't buying my "harmless" description—was a kind of Flower Fly, but when I got home and spent a good hour trying to match the insect with one of the Syrphids in an online field guide, I had no luck whatsoever. Then, a stroke of good luck: I was steered by the guide's authors to another group of similar dipterans known, prosaically, as the Thick-headed Flies... the family Conopidae. Alas, when I saw this one working the Hydrangea flowers for pollen grains this morning, I realized that I'd forgotten the ID lesson gleaned from a lot of hard work. Of course, I went through all of the past steps and, after an hour, lucked into remembering the Conopids. Mea culpa, I'm thick-headed, indeed. And I'm also not sure of the fly's proper position in the hierarchy. Getting to genus is tricky for the thick-headed. I'm working on it.


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