Green Crane Fly, and Mating Crane Flies
Here’s a small (body about 5 mm long) crane fly that came to our porch light on July 4, 2011. This one caught my eye because of its almost emerald green color, which is pretty unusual for a crane fly,
After searching around, it looks like there is only one local species of crane fly that is so distinctly green, so I’m pretty sure it is Erioptera chlorophylla.
I expect that it would be very well camouflaged in the grass, so it was lucky that this one was on the house siding where it was visible. In addition to the color, it also had unusually large, dark eyes for a crane fly, which is also a key ID feature for Erioptera chlorophylla. I also marked the large, green halteres (all that is left of the second pair of wings in true flies), mainly just because I think they’re amusing.
Other than the color, these are pretty typical small crane flies. The larvae live in moist earth, and the adults usually hang out in low vegetation near bodies of water.
While we are talking about crane flies, here are a couple of pictures[1] of a different species from June 17, 2011, in the process of mating. When crane flies mate, the male uses the claspers at the end of his abdomen to grab hold of the end of the female’s abdomen, and they stay coupled together for quite some time, even sometimes flying while linked together.
I think the one in the upper part of the picture, facing away from the camera, is the female. It is interesting that the female is holding her wings folded over her back, while the male is holding his wings pointing almost straight out sideways. I had always thought that the way that they held their wings when at rest was a diagnostic trait that could sometimes be used to distinguish between different crane fly species. But, these two are clearly the same species, so I was obviously wrong about that. Although, I suppose it is possible that the male would be holding his wings differently if he weren’t occupied at the moment.
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[1] The pictures of the mating crane flies are pretty blurry because the crane flies were on a window well above my head, and I couldn’t get any closer than about 6 feet. The 100 mm macro lens on my camera is a reasonable short telephoto, but this was asking quite a lot of it.
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Oooo! wild insect sex (in-sex?)
Found a green crane fly in a floating in a bucket of water just the other day. Nice to have a name to put to it.