Mark McCaughrean23h ago

Still slowly crawling towards full-blown spring here – mostly cloudy & not that warm yet 🤷‍♂️

But still some things to see in the garden, starting with this pretty fly.

From the colouration, & arrangement of bristles on the thorax & around the eyes, my best guess is a female common European greenbottle (Lucilia sericata; 🇩🇪 Goldfliege / Grüne Goldfliege).

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Show threadMark McCaughrean

Harder to photo & ID is this much smaller metallic fly, perched on the edge of a tulip.

From the shape & sheen, it's likely in genus Psilopa (shore or brine flies in English; Uferfliege in 🇩🇪), & one plausible option for the species would be P. nitidula.

That said, we're quite some way from any sea or brine, so maybe it's something else entirely 😬

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Apr 3 at 4:36pmWeb
Show threadMark McCaughrean23h ago

And then there's even smaller spider that was dangling at the end of a thread of silk in the breeze before briefly landing on me.

Likely a juvenile from genus Philodroma, the running crab spiders, & perhaps either P. albidus (🇩🇪 Heller Flachstrecker or P. dispar (🇩🇪 Zweifarbflachstrecker).

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Show threadMark McCaughrean22h ago

As for this one, it's very likely an ichneumon wasp, but being more specific within that huge family is difficult.

There are 3,600 species in Germany alone, so narrowing it down is tough. There's a very similar picture shown for Hercus fontinalis on Wikipedia, but in other pictures, it looks quite different.

Any wasp experts in the house?

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Show threadBarry Schwartz 🫖22h ago
@markmccaughrean Brine flies are common by ponds, but this looks more like a lance fly.
Show threadMark McCaughrean22h ago
@chemoelectric Could be – there's a wide spread of metallic colours in that family. iNaturalist was fairly sure it's Psilopa, & there are some of those that look a lot like this, but I agree, the lack of a nearby pond isn't helpful to that theory 🙂
Show threadBarry Schwartz 🫖18h ago
@markmccaughrean Where I live, there is nowhere that a pond is not nearby. :)
Show threadBarry Schwartz 🫖18h ago
@markmccaughrean I mean, it is mid-continent and there are herring gulls everywhere.
Show threadMark McCaughrean18h ago
@chemoelectric Ha – I’m still adjusting to living back in the middle of this continent after fifteen years just five km from the North Sea. And being halfway up a steep valley is equally weird …
Show threadBarry Schwartz 🫖3h ago

@markmccaughrean Occasionally I have seen white pelicans, but the supposed place to see the largest concentrations of white pelicans is a lake to the north a bit.

I do not see many arthropods or molluscs compared to growing up in New Jersey, but it might be due partly to spraying in this more urban area.

Show threadBarry Schwartz 🫖3h ago
@markmccaughrean It could also simply be that I grew up in an infested house and yard, which I certainly did, and also I was young and explored and now am old.