I need help identifying this large fly that was on my patio last night (the orange color is due to the porch light, click for bigger version). It was maybe an inch in body length. Any ideas?
Update: Below the fold, I give what may be an identification.
Kevin Christie, a PhD student at the University of Illinois in the Neuroscience program, sent me the following via e-mail:
I'm currently doing fieldwork in central Missouri, with colleagues at the University of Missouri - Columbia, and out in the woods, have seen several insects that resemble your picture. After speaking to an entomologist (next door to my adopted lab here at Mizzou), he believes that my insects (which resemble your picture with some color differences) are examples of various Bee Flies - Family Bombyliidae, looking at your picture and some google'd images, it could be a member of the genus Anthrax or Xenox
Poking around, I think what we have is Xenox tigrinus, the tiger bee fly. Little is know about most bombyliids - teh adults feed on nectar while the larvae are parasitoids of insect eggs and larvae.
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Probably some type of tephritid. You know, real fruit flies.
PS, I'm probably wrong.
I assume you know it's some type of horse-fly (family Tabanidae)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_fly
Global distribution, but I don't know if they get as far north as Ireland, and while they're not uncommon, you don't see them every day, so you may not have seen one before. Huge, isn't it?
They're most active in hot weather. I don't think I've ever seen one when the temperature was under 90° F. I wouldn't begin to guess at a genera, but an entomologist could probably ID it off the top of her head.
Yes, you get horseflies in Ireland. They were a constant annoyance in the summer when we would be in the field tagging deer fawns. I'm not so sure that the specimen is a horse fly though.
My friend the entomologist guesses either a deer fly or a true fruit fly, but suspects it's too big to be the latter.