Bug of the week: f*cking flies

All the rain that has been dumped on central Australia over the past few months has given a stimulus to all sorts of things to go forth and fuck – we’d better breed up right now because we have a good season before us.

One of the beneficiaries of this good season – and a rampant opportunist in good seasons such as we are having right now – are the members of the Order Diptera – the flies.

I snapped this pair going hard at it right outside my front door on the weekend. They may be members of the family Muscidae and my (rather ill-informed) guess is that they are members of the Neomyia genus…but then again they could be members of the family Tachinidae, which, according to the wonderful “A Field Guide to the Insects of Australia” by Paul Zborowski & Ross Storey (Reed New Holland 1998):

“…contains 542 species…This is a very beneficial family as the larvae are all parasitic on other insects, including pest species in several orders…[the] Rutilia which are parasites of scarabaeid beetles, have very showy metallic colours.”

Here is another member of the Diptera that I found in my front yard this past weekend – perhaps a little less preoccupied that his cousins above.

There are lots of other insects around at the moment and it seems like just about every grasshopper species found in Australia is in central Australia right now.

Here is a member of the “Slant-faced” group of grasshoppers from the family Acrididae that I found in my front yard this past weekend.

Thanks to the good folks at the “Garden for Wildlife” group in Alice Springs for their excellent guide to Grasshoppers in their most recent Newsletter.

If you want to see their Guide to grasshoppers – and all the other wondeful information they have there, go to their website here.