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Project Noah Nature School
Eristalis tenax
Bugguide.net tells us that the drone fly also known as the European drone fly, was introduced to the United States before 1874. It apparently found North America to its liking and is now well established from Alaska to Florida and point seven remotely close to being between them. Apparently the maggots are toxic! Don't eat them. They are a good pollinator and thus otherwise beneficial, despite being invasive. Bee mimc fly on shasta daisy. Has yellow-orange patches on each side below the wing attachment
An ID was given via an insect ID group - this fly didn't hover or have marking like our hoverflies and was altogether too big for the overflies in our area(he is an introduced species) and yet I found him on the chart! So I learned something new
Lovely pictures - this is a hover fly in the family Syrphidae
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoverfly
Spotted on Jul 7, 2013
Submitted on Jul 10, 2013
