The bottlebrush buckeyes ( Aesculus parviflora ) are in flower right now, months after their red and painted relatives, and the insects are going crazy. The only one I have a reasonably clear id for is this presumptive Epargyreus clarus, silver-spotted skipper.

Some of the insects are actively engaged in the flowers (the bumblebees and tiny bees especially), and others are using the shrub with its thick dressing of leaves as a landing platform. These two probably have different priorities but I like the juxtaposition.



The bug on the left almost surely has to be a white-margined burrow bug, Sehirus cinctus seen last, in early May, but none of the bugguide images of this species shows yellow legs and antennae. The fly? I’m guessing a sarcophagid, but at the moment I won’t go further than that.

This fly was also lying in wait on a leaf and was elusive. I don’t know that I’m going to encounter it again but it puzzles me. The patterning reminds me of a syrphid, but look at all that fur! The syrphids look to be uniformly hairless, with their gaudy coloration a function of the exoskeleton, not the hairs.

The stance and behavior reminded me of robber flies, but I’m not seeing anything that hits.



This fly was clearly drawn to the anthers, a pollen guzzler. I don’t think it was interested in nectar. But it was also elusive and picky, hovering like the wasp it resembles and repeatedly declining to come to rest.



There are all sorts of possibilities here. It could also be a syrphid, maybe of the Syrphini, Ocyptamus, perhaps O. fascipennis, but the wing coloration isn’t right.

I’ve been fooled before, characteristically wisened up by Bev who gave me my first introduction to Conopidae, Thick-headed Flies and wasp mimics. This is probably not Stylogaster, but that discovery is worth a revisit from last August. I’m particularly proud of those photographs.

I could also be one of the Conopinae, such as Physoconops or Physocephala, but though the wings are roughly right, the abdomens are not. Surely the big red eyes and knobby antennae are informative, but not so far for me.

I’ll try to do some more photography today, hopefully clarify these images, and continue a multi-part story.