Bee, Fly, Bee-Fly, Or...? Photo Essay On An Interesting Buggy Find.

While on the way back from Parfrey's Glen this fella landed on Gideon's backpack. I at that time had the backpack in my hand. I eyed the bug and my full hands... just the luck. A bug would appear when my hands were too full to snap it's photo.

I took my chances and put the backpack on the stroller handle waiting for that bug to fly off... only it didn't! I got out my camera and this is what I saw in my macro mode:



This fella was either scared, or ready for his close up, because he didn't fly off... and he even moved a bit so that I could get different angles.


Here's a shot of his hairy backside.


One more shot...


At the time we didn't notice nearly all this detail, but we debated if it was a bee or a fly. It rather looks like both. Then I saw something called a Dotted Bee-Fly, but I can't find any info about it anywhere but in the UK (it has wings like this fella, but more body hair... this fella was very small... it probably a juvenile whatever it is.) This fella seems to be missing the bee-fly proboscis as well.

I've been to several bug sites, Google, Yahoo, too, and I can't seem to ID this bug. Any ideas? The wings are not terribly common on these sorts of bugs, I'm finding, and most are ruled out since the sports/pattern on the wings is not present. He also kinda looks a bit like a Hoverfly. He also looks a lot like a Tachnid Fly... except the wing spots are not seen there.

All photos were taken on May 3, 2008 at Parfrey's Glen State park with my Canon Powershot A560 camera. No editing has been done to these photos aside from cropping to show details.