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Robber FliesWeird bug in Idaho
Location: Lake Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
August 20, 2011 2:49 am
I shot this picture August 17th at Lake Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in the late afternoon. Any help would be appreciated! Thank you!
Signature: Kelly, Everett, WA
Robber Fly
Dear Kelly,
This magnificent predator is a Giant Robber Fly, and Robber Flies just might get the prize for the most adroit insect predators who hunt on the wing. Large Robber Flies can kill large Dragonflies. The closest match we could find on BugGuide at the start of our research was for Proctacanthus heros, though to the best of our knowledge, that is a southern species. The red legs and red abdomen look very similar to your individual. We suspected it was the same genus, however, there are no other matching images that we could find on BugGuide. We did locate this marvelous Random Natural Acts web page titled Proctacanthids devoted to the genus. At last we discovered this photo of Stenopogon inquinatus from British Columbia on BugGuide that looks like a very close visual match to your individual, and we believe that is a correct species identification. Random Natural Acts also has a Stenopogon page.
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