giant western crane fly ~ 07/17/10 ~ at home

giant western crane fly
Holorusia hespera

Enormous might be a better common name descriptor for this crane fly. Powell and Hogue state this is one of the world's largest flies and I believe it. Compared to my uncertainty over my other crane fly post, I'm positive about this ID. The outdated name is H. rubiginosa. The larvae apparently get up to 2 1/2 inches in length - phew!

In an effort to capture a sense of scale with a ruler, I used the ol' fridge trick to get her to "calm down" enough to take a picture. That's how I was able to get a picture of her belly in the third pic. No worries, I let her go outside when I was done as evidenced with my last pic above... but only after I chased her around my living room ceiling with my wide-mouthed jar and a chair. I learned from my disastrous moth release = bird food episode and let this beauty go at night. Interesting to note, as she was warming up, her halteres started vibrating so rapidly that I couldn't see them. Then her 2 wings started going and she took flight. It reminded me of one of those high-tech military helicopters.

As a side comment, relative size is often a difficult thing to grasp in pictures when it's a solo or close-up shot... I particularly like these two blog posts that did a great job at showing size:
Norfolk Wildlife - marbled beauty
Ohio Birds and Biodiversity - ruby-throated hummingbird's nest (check out the 4th picture!!!)

marsh crane fly
Tipula oleracea

The is a decent-sized crane fly, maybe the 2nd or 3rd largest I typically see in our stairwell each year. I'm making a huge guess as to species based on 1) its general look 2) the color markings on the wings and 3) the time of year. Initially, I thought it might be a common European crane fly (T. paludosa), but those only seem to fly in the fall. There's simply not much online information for CA crane flies. Powell and Hogue state there are 170 known Tipula species in CA.

bee fly
family Bombyliidae

This is the first time I'm linking to another nature blog in my ID. I really like Bug Eric's blog. Yes, I follow an extraordinary number of nature blogs, and I'm enjoying reading the new posts from around the world.

I strongly suspect this is Bombylius major, but Powell & Hogue state there are over 200 species in CA. I'm also surprised this is my first fly posting. I'll never catch up with my backdated ID pics!

ps 04/14/10 - It's been fun reading other people's nature blogs. Squirrel's View has an awesome post on bee flies.