Jeremiah Fargo’s wife Maria reprises her role as “the pink bit” in this photo. It’s probably also the same fly, I guess. The new cast member “green bit” is played by grass.
I twofered this pic because it gives a better view of the fly’s face; the previous picture was just too horrifying to skip. Though now that you’ve seen it you know what that proboscis is for.
Mwah!
Jeremiah Fargo sends in this picture of his wife Maria. She’s the pink bit. Also, there’s a fly–it’s the black bit. No, not that black bit, that’s the logo. The other black bit. Yeah. That’s the one.
So, would now be a bad time to mention that flies eat by vomiting digestive juices onto their food, letting it dissolve, and then sucking the slurry back up? Think of it as sort of a meat smoothie.
You know what the best part of running insectpod is? It’s knowing that, the next time you get a smoothie at Jamba Juice, you’re going to think of fly vomit.
Inspired by Jeremiah’s in-air bee shot, Andrew Lin went out to his garden and stalked this red hoverfly. It took multiple attempts on different days before he got this shot, but I think the effort was worth it. He got one from the front, but it was a bit blurry. Besides, we’re all adults here, we can look at a hoverfly’s butt without giggling.
It’s okay. I’ll wait.
Now then. Be sure to check out the large version–you can see the fly’s back feet sticking out from underneath its butt and–
It’s okay. I’ll wait.
As I was saying, you can see his hind legs sticking out.
You guys are so immature.
Thanks Andrew! Awesome shot!
P.S. Butt
P.P.S. I find the blurred green background soothing. Do you? Have a wallpaper.
Tim Eisele sent me this picture a few months ago, and I’m glad it got lost in the shuffle because I wanted to talk about him today. But first, he has this to say about the bug:
This robber fly was hanging out on our mulberry bush in June. My wife
broke off the branch and brought it in the house to be photographed, and
at first I thought it had died it a lifelike pose. Then, after about a
dozen pictures, it flew off.
As usual, Tim gets amazing shots and provides good ID. What more could I ask for? I mean, besides the cool bugs on his own blog, like this water louse? Well, just because I couldn’t ask doesn’t mean he couldn’t provide. Yesterday he mentioned this article on how to hack your Canon PowerShot. It’s a tool called CHDK, the Canon Hacker Development Kit.
I’m jazzed. I played with it just enough to know that my camera does indeed support it, so with any luck, soon I should have some enhanced images to show off! I don’t know what the extent of the capabilities of the tool is yet, but I’m a programmer in my day job, and an unrepentant tinkerer in my free time, so I have some project ideas already milling in my head. I want to try some of the compound DOF stuff for sure, and I should be able to script up a mode that brackets the focus on a shot, automatically taking 3 or 5 photos at varying focus every time I push the button. …So exciting! I’ll be sure to post results as I find them.
Thanks, Tim, for the link… oh yeah, and for the awesome photo! 
The proper name of a species is generally given as the genus and the species together, with the genus capitalized, such as Salticus scenicus or Apis mellifera. The insect pictured here is a fly, probably in genus Musca. You know how “Api” is the word for “a bee” but also means “pointy”? Well, this is interesting: Musca is the Latin word for “a fly”, but it also means “pesky” or “bothersome”.
This might be Musca domestica (literally: “Housefly”) but I’m not too sure. The wings are not darkly veined and the eyes are brown rather than red. I don’t know if that makes it a different species or just a different strain.
One thing I like about this picture is only evident in the larger photo: I actually got a whole line of flies in the photo. This is the only one that was in focus, however, so I cropped the image down. If you want to see blurry flies, I left the larger version uncropped.
Reader mARK bLOORE strikes again! Or, in this case, holds very still while a hover fly stops on his finger for a rest. I love insect photos that include people. I partly like them for the sense of scale they provide, but mostly I like them for the sense of wonder. Insects are supposed to be skittish and hard to interact with except at great (to them) distances. When you trick a bug into landing on your finger, that is made completely out of win.
Take special note of the larger version of the image. Look at the hairs on that thing! When I grow up, I want to be this good at macro photography.
This gigantic house fly (nearly 1cm long) was terrorizing the yard of Howard and Sandra Tayler a couple months ago. At the time I took it I thought the photo was acceptable but not fantastic, but now that I review it, I really wish I had paid better attention to whatever the tan stuff is that the fly has landed on.
Is that a scrap of leather, or perhaps a freaky lawn mushroom? A dog’s rawhide chew toy?
Thanks, Howard and Sandra, for letting me come over and shoot–we’ll need to do it again this Spring when things warm up!
Tim Pollard strikes again with this fantastic picture of a large fly. He says it’s about the size of his thumbnail, which probably means it’s only around 10-14mm. But still, what an amazingly colored fly. I keep expecting the back segments to light up one at a time–anyone who had an Electronic Simon game as a kid knows where I’m coming from here.
As with Tim’s previous picture, this one comes to us from Banora Point, NSW, Australia. Thanks again, Tim!
While I was in Moab over Labor-Day Weekend, I saw several long-legged flies prowling around for gnats and other edible fliers smaller than themselves. This one stopped on the grapevines long enough for me to get a picture. I like watching the dolichopodidae flies because they are lightning fast both on wing and on foot. They’ll stop to eat or rest but they don’t seem to have a slow speed: it’s always go go go!
Click for wallpaper. (It’s 1280×960. If you would like a different resolution, post a comment and I’ll try to hook you up.)
Two days before this picture was taken, my back yard was under an inch of snow. Welcome to the fickle seasons of Utah! This fly stopped on the railing of my back porch at sunset, providing for good lighting and a nice contrast.
This is just a housefly; I could have cropped this picture a lot closer, but it struck me as less a “pretty bug picture” and more of a “pretty picture with a bug in it”. Seems like a good candidate for wallpaper, so here you go. (If you would like it in a different resolution than 1280×960, leave me a comment and I’ll try to hook you up.)
