Identification of ?Robber Fly and Scorpion Fly
Dear Bugman,
Happened upon your site tonight and am most excited! Have bought several books and trying to identify local species in our Southern Tablelands area of NSW, Australia. Hubby and I spend a good deal of time at Bungonia State Recreation Area doing the lazy man tours of the gorgeous bush to see what interesting things we c an find…..we are never disappointed! What first started out as just native flowers and now turned into fauna and in particular, BUGS! I’ve attached two photographs taken this month and am hoping you can identify them. They’re beauties! Cheers!
Katherine & Ricky Lee
Hi Katherine and Ricky Lee,
What a positively gorgeous Blue Eyes Lacewing, Nymphes myrmeleonides, which we identified on the Geocities website. According to Wikidpedia, it is one of the largest Lacewings in the world. It belongs to the family Nymphidae and the order Neuroptera which contains other insects like owlflies and mantispids.
Dear Daniel,
What a beautiful photo Katherine and Ricky Lee have taken of the Blue Eyes Lacewing! Congratulations to you both. These insects are around our place a lot lately. You can recognise them before they land by their distinctive manner of flying – as though their wings are a bit disjointed. They like to sit underneath leaves and look up and out at the world. I recall that my first email to you was about the eggs of the Nymphes myrmeleonides, which you posted on the Eggs page, so perhaps Katherine and Ricky would like to do a bit of cross checking and watch out for the eggs. Regards
Grev