Nowickia ferox

Not the best of days. I visited the dentist to have my tooth assessed - and basically there is no good solution. Three options are available, and all have problems. The one the dentist recommends is the most expensive - and it is really very, very expensive. I'm still trying to decide what to do...

I was supposed to be going to a site meeting in the afternoon, but was told that I couldn't go by a rather pig-headed and obstructive site manager. He said he wasn't prepared to pay for me to visit the site with the County Council, but in the end his stubbornness is likely to cost him even more money.

As a distraction I spent a little time watching insects visiting the marjoram. This bristly creature is a a new species for me and the 2014 garden list. It's a Tachinid fly with the scientific name Nowickia ferox. It's about the size of a large bluebottle but with an impressive yellow zig-zag pattern on the abdomen.

However, what the photo doesn't show is the very interesting and ghoulish life-cycle. Tachinid flies are "endoparasitoids", that is to say that the maggot stage of the fly develops inside the host, eating it from within and then emerging to pupate. This fly is specific to the Dark Arches moth, which is always very abundant in the moth trap.