Sit!

If evolution ever designed a fly that looks more like a small dog - or perhaps one of those battery-powered toy dogs that turns back flips - I'd very much like to see it.

This is a conopid fly, or beegrabber. Given that the back of its thorax is entirely black and grey, with no red patch, plus the lack of black hairs on the cheeks, and the fact that there's only one dark mark apparent on each wing, I'm fairly confident that it's Myopa testacea, which is a known parasitoid of the Chocolate Mining Bee, Andrena scotica. Chocolate miners are having a particularly good year here in my garden, so I guess it's not surprising that Myopa testacea should turn up too. 

From this angle it looks as though this specimen has suffered some kind of incident which has removed the lower half of its left front leg, but if you check out my second photo you can just about make out that this isn't the case. Rather, the lower leg is bent right underneath the fly, in the same way but even more acutely than the right foreleg. In fact all the visible legs are flexed like those of a sprinter on their marks, which makes an explosive getaway - or a  back flip - look like a distinct possibility. 

This isn't the first M. testacea I've seen this season, but in the warm and bright weather of the past couple of weeks I was hard-pressed to even get a lens on them, and there was absolutely no way they were going to sit for close portraits like this. Today though was dark and quite cold, and the few invertebrates that had ventured out were unusually passive. Having spotted this specimen on one of the hazel trees in the wild garden from quite a distance away, I approached it very slowly, stopping to take a couple of photos every few steps - but despite its apparent readiness to spring into action, it stayed completely still. 

After taking my photos I carefully uncoiled back to the vertical, said a polite thank you, and backed away, but while I continued to potter back and forth the fly remained stock still on its leaf for at least the next half hour. When eventually I saw that it had gone, it occurred to me to wonder if someone had popped into the garden and changed its batteries while I wasn't looking.

By the way, if flies aren't your thing, I've posted my bee of the day on Facebook.