Robber Fly

While I was organizing files last night, I ran across a photo from the Ft. Worth Botanical Garden. My grand-daughter called it a bearded bee. In reality it is a Laphria sp. Robber Fly. They are mostly beneficial insects but do prey on some honeybees. The robber flies are of the Order Diptera (flies). The Robber Fly Family is Asilidae and species identification is difficult at best. There are ~900 North American species and over 7000 species world-wide.

It reminded me of a blog by Doctor H P Flowers "... Sweet Home". In which he says “Every bug needs a leaf to call home”.
http://doctorflowers.typepad.com/doctorflowers/2008/02/sweet-home.html

Do you think the above robber fly feels at home on his hairy grass stem?

Probably what most people think of as a robber fly or what we see most commonly here in Ft. Worth is Efferia sp.

And another colorful robber fly, possibly Diogmites sp. doing what robber flies do.

The photo organization that I was working on last night when I ran across the Robber Fly is an impossible task.

I wish caffeine wasn't so hard on my heart. I could have really used some last night and even now.

I am in the middle of reorganizing my photos. 5 hard drives, 3 external drives, and a multitude of cd's and dvd's. I don't even want to think about the negative/print scanner (which was a gift from Christmas-before-last) waiting to receive the dozens of boxes and file cabinets full of prints, slides and negatives that I have accumulated for over 40 years.

One of my main projects this winter has been backing up, sorting, and thoroughly viewing the 18,000 digital photos from our trip through the Western US (16 states), Canada (4 provinces), and Alaska. I had always wanted to drive the Alaska Highway, but little did I realize that we would be gone so long (16 weeks and 18,000 miles round trip). It was a great trip, but more on that later.

Troy