Hoverfly

Heliophilus pendulas

Description:

As their common name suggests, they are often seen hovering or nectaring at flowers; the adults of many species feed mainly on nectar and pollen, while the larvae (maggots) eat a wide range of foods. In some species, the larvae are saprotrophs, eating decaying plant and animal matter in the soil or in ponds and streams. In other species, the larvae are insectivores and prey on aphids, thrips, and other plant-sucking insects.

Species ID Suggestions

8 Comments

NuwanChathuranga 11 years ago

Nice!

Adarsha B S 11 years ago

Agree with you...second pic has few more details..But however, flies/bees are very difficult to capture due to randomness! So hard to get more details as u said....

nexttogone 11 years ago

Thanks for the links. I will read these in a bit. And yes, I can definatetly see now that this IS a hover fly. As for your's, it is very close but the abdomen on yours seems shorter to me. However, These pictures may not have brought out all of the true markings in the close ups. That is something only you may be able to judge.

Adarsha B S 11 years ago

@Nexttogone: I too googled about carpenter bee..Not found exact matching..But in case of Hoverfly i found one similar species "Helophilus pendulus"...You may wanna check the following link..Its really confusing friend...
http://www.bnhs.co.uk/focuson/hoverflies...
http://don-tbugme.blogspot.in/2010/08/ma...

nexttogone 11 years ago

Hello Adarsha ") I looked for this spotting for several hours on bug guide and I could not find it. I looked at several different types too. The next place that I was going to look was carpenter bees but I ran out of time. They tend to look like hoverflies also. The way that I found my carpenter bee was by typing "Carpenter Bees in Texas" in my Google browser and I found them in Google Images. You may want to try a search like that for your area on hoverflies and carpenter bees.