a little wild   (a small slice of wildlife)

Diptera

Perhaps Eristalis cf dimidiata?

With wing venation:

Probably Sarcophagidae, perhaps Sarcophaga

This fly was utterly amazing. Just look at the plumage. I think he was showing off; he was sitting in the middle of the leaf, strutting around, waving his hands. Relatively not deterred by the camera.

It’s Physiphora alceae, apparently an import from Africa. It’s in Ulidiidae, and this certainly does not look like a typical Ulidiid!

Closeup of the eyes:

These flies were everywhere (saw at least ten of them). Their behavior was also very un-fly-like, perhaps for mating? All of them were sitting on rocks close to the ground, in the open, and did not move at all when confronted with the camera.

If I were forced to guess, I’d say Anthomyiidae, but with very little confidence. We need central places where we can look at wing venations and find out family it is!

This one looked the same, also close to the ground, but on leaf debris rather than a rock. Perhaps ovipositing.

I don’t know if this one is the same species or not:

Hymenoptera

Halictids always put on a show. These all seem to be Augochlora pura, but there were some Agopostemon too.

Pompilidae, Anoplius. Tough to go any further.

A small wasp, perhaps 2-3 mm long. I think this is Braconidae. You can see the wing venation in the first photo and it seems to be a reasonable but not perfect match for Braconidae. The (RS + M)a vein is present, so there’s no “horsehead” pattern. The 2nd recurrent vein is absent. On the other hand, I don’t really see a r-m vein; and the number of antennomeres seems to be about 15, which may or may not be too low for Braconidae.

I would like to point out that the second photo was taken at full magnification (with the Raynox DCR-250 on the 100mm macro lens, at closest focus), and that damn wasp would not stop moving. I’m sharing it as a minor miracle that it’s even close to in focus.

EDIT: Braconidae seems correct, perhaps Microgastrinae to narrow it down further.

Orthoptera

This seems to be Melanoplus bivittatus:

Coleoptera

Rove beetle, Staphylinidae. Here’s a guess: Tachinus picipes, compare with https://bugguide.net/node/view/560899.

Closeup of the claspers:

Mantidae

Looks like the Chinese mantid, Tenodera sinensis (note the vertical stripes on the face).

Spiders

This was at home, doing us all a favor by catching whatever she could. Eustala.

No exoskeletons