The yellow-winged flies

Find a nice big animal poo, for example some horse dung, and check it carefully. It’s probably swarming with flies – most of them are yellow and furry, or blue, green and shiny-metallic. But are some of them big and black with distinctly yellow wings? These are noon flies, and they aren’t as easy to spot as you would think. They are often hiding in vegetation close to the dung, so they can be difficult to find.

But is that one sitting over there, on that flower, or on that branch on the little bush? Excellent!

It’s waiting for just the right moment. Noon flies are always found near large animal-dung. Not because they eat it themselves but because their larvae are predators. They live off the larvae of other insects that  raise their young in manure. They have to lay their eggs at just the right moment, so the other animals’ larvae are nice and juicy when the hungry noon fly larvae hatch.