Criorhina Bumblefly

Praise be—the sun actually came out today and it was close to late-April warm, well, compared to the raw, chilly weather we've been having. And with the improvement, the tightly shuttered flowers re-opened and brought in the snoozing, and, no doubt, starving pollinators eager to replenish their batteries. The tightly restricted patch of Lesser Celandine blooms—a horribly invasive species in the Buttercup family—were, as usual, the top bee and fly magnets, and while I knew most of the visitors from past observations, this one, a very good copy of a small bumblebee, was, I quickly realized, a definite newcomer. It wasn't all that cooperative, but I managed to get what I hoped were enough diagnostic photographs to identify it. The task proved a real challenge, and I had to learn some new anatomy, but in the end, I decided that what I had was a Bare-cheeked Bumblefly, a.k.a., Criorhina nigriventis. I was overjoyed when my Canadian mentor Jeff Skevington, noted: "Very nice find and correctly identified." Praise be, again. I'm getting somewhere in the Syrphid kingdom!