Blowfly
Nick Stetich is a former coworker of mine; more importantly he’s a good friend. This will probably embarrass him a little, but you have to know Nick to really appreciate how funny and brilliant and yet completely egoless he is. I got this email from him, stating simply, “I’m sure you get a lot of these…” and then he includes this totally amazing macro shot, giving me instant camera envy. Here’s his own words:
Just foolin’ around with the camera on the back porch. A green fly (nothing as cool as those Aussie flies) landed on the strawberry plants on my balcony, so I thought I’d take a picture of him, and he was actually pretty tolerant–perhaps he was just enjoying the sun like the rest of us on the Puget Sound were that morning.
Good Heavens, Nick. If that’s what you do just foolin’ around, please don’t ever go take insect photography seriously. I was kind of hoping to keep InsectPOD around a while longer.
I feel like I should know this fly, or at least be able to group it properly, but I’m pretty much at a loss. I can say with some confidence that it’s a green fly.
Oh, but what the heck. Let’s take a stab here, for me the thought process is half the fun¹. It could be Musca domestica (common housefly) but I’m really not sure. I think M. domestica has a dull carapace, and not the iridescent green or blue? Look at the eye geometry and the clear abdomen, though: if it’s not M. domestica I bet it’s a cousin. Also note the fiddly bladders on its head (somebody commented that they inflate that to break out of their egg? Eww?).
Okay, so starting with M. domestica as a theory, let’s go check bugguide. I type in “Musca domestica” in the search box, and get some results. Okay, yeah, M. domestica does not have a shiny thorax. It’s dull, sometimes with stripes: like this.
But here’s the cool thing: when you search for “Musca domestica” on bugguide, you don’t just get all the houseflies. You also get all the flies that people thought were houseflies until being told otherwise. Here’s a Tachynid fly, for example. And wait… what’s that last fly in the search results there? It’s shiny! Clicky clicky… Hmm. Somebody says it’s definitely “houseflies and they’re kin”. But that fly is a shiny black, with a black abdomen. Hmm.
Okay, let’s try searching for “green fly” and hope to get lucky. Whoa. Lots of search results. Unfortunately, there’s a LOT of green flies, most of them not houseflies. But wait. What’s this… Lucilia? It’s a blowfly! That’s why I should recognize it! Ah, and now the interesting reading: “Most are scavengers. The larvae live in carrion, excrement and similar materials. (You can tell that was written by a scientist. They use really big words to avoid saying “the larvae live in dead critters, poop, and stuff like poop.”)
Thank you, Nick, for the awesome photo! We look forward to seeing more of your foolin’ arounds.
¹ And given my track record, the other half of the fun must be “being wrong”.
Slowly getting the site back onto an even keel. It's nice to get back into the old posting rhythm.
tceisele said,
July 9, 2008 @ 7:15 am
Last year, we had some of what was probably the same fly in our house. And by “some of”, I mean “probably a few hundred, mostly beating themselves to death against the windows”. Given what the larvae live on, and the fact that they were all *inside* the house, this had some disturbing implications about the likelihood of something fairly substantial (like, say, a large squirrel) having died in the walls.
David Brady said,
July 9, 2008 @ 7:42 am
tceisele: Yikes!
Buffer Count: 0. Should jump to 2 or 3 by tonight, though. Here’s hoping.
Nick said,
July 9, 2008 @ 11:35 am
Wow, thanks, Dave; it made my day to see that you posted this!
I was lucky the fly didn’t take off before I got this shot. I think it was the second to last one before he finally decided I was a little too close.
And thanks for the ID on the species. I’ll have to check around for any stray corpses (or at least wash my strawberries!)
Philip Johnson said,
July 9, 2008 @ 12:50 pm
This is probably the fly known here in UK as the greenbottle. Has achieved renewed populariy with the medical profession ad the maggot are use to clean wound, ulcers etc of dead flesh when all other methods have proved ineffective. The maggots eat only the necrtotic (dead) tissues, and and leave health flesh alone.
JFargo said,
July 9, 2008 @ 1:35 pm
Nick, awesome photo!
Tceisle, I can one-up that, but only a little: When I was a teenager living at home, there was a wastebasket outside the door to my room. Things were put in this wastebasket by my four siblings; generally anything that needed to be thrown out, regardless of the fact that they may have been things like mice in mouse traps.
I walked into my room, which, if you’ll remember, was right next to this basket. For a moment, I wondered why my walls were painted green.
I kid you not.
They were so thick that they looked painted on.
The wastebasket got removed, and my window was opened. They left within an hour, completely gone with nothing left behind to note that they were ever there except one or two smooshed ones.
It’s a sight that I’ll never forget, my bedroom walls alive with movement and sound.
MacNut said,
July 9, 2008 @ 9:06 pm
JFargo, how badly did you beat your siblings for contributing to your green fly problem?
JFargo said,
July 10, 2008 @ 6:54 am
Well, had the flies stuck around for any longer, I think it would have been worse, but since the problem cleared up within an extremely short time, it wasn’t that bad. I was amazed at how fast they were gone after the source was removed and they were given an escape point.
Matthew Smith said,
July 13, 2008 @ 11:40 pm
Australia doesn’t necessarily have big flies, just lots of them sometimes. Although I have seen one or two giant flies and next time I se one I’ll try and send in a description (as I believe my chances of getting one in front of my camera are low)