Old shots till the camera gets fixed

[tpe]

It has been gone for over a month now, and the withdrwaral is hitting hard.

On another forum they have a bee thread that reminded me of this from the summer that doesnt really fit in, deep and dark in blackberry bush area in central france.

It has been hard not taking or posting any pictures for so long so this old one will have to do untill the reapair man has finished his job .




And another one of the same guy, unfortunatly this only works at high resolution as the interesting bits dissapear too much here, that and contrast and comp etc .




Possibly Volucella inanis?

tim

[Mike B in OKlahoma]

Nicely done whatever they are! How long till your camera is back in your hands?

[rjlittlefield]

It has been gone for over a month now, and the withdrwaral is hitting hard.

Oh dear, another dead camera story! You certainly have my sympathies!

Possibly Volucella inanis?

Could be, though from the face V. elegans is another good possibility.

Unfortunately the keys at http://syrphidae.com are offline now (with a discouraging prognosis posted), so I don't know what is diagnostic for this group.

BTW, http://syrphidae.com/photo.php has a nice table of small pictures that seems handy for European syrphids.

--Rik

[beetleman]

A great photo Tim. A very strange head on this fella. Looks like a fly with a bee tongue.

[tpe]

Hey Mike, thanks. It looks like the camera is not comming back, it is the 5th time it has been in for repair and the repair shop have asked sony if i can have a refund, so i think that is very good If they agree, then it will take some of the cost of the next model up .

Rik, it is still hard, but hopefully there is now a light at the end of the tunnel, hopefully before christmas .

Those are wonderfull links, i have never seen that site before, a real welth of information. I hope they get back up, or someone else says they will host. Daft really but the internet still amazes me that it has got so much easier to get this kind of info, but perhaps one day there will be charaties that could dontate to especially usefull non profit sites, so as places like these dont get lost.

Thanks Doug. And for pointing it out, i had not noticed the mouth parts. It is kind of odd, especially as all the related flies i have seen like this clearly have mouth parts that are very similar to a common house fly, with that nice alien like fat disolving brillo pad on the end. This really does seem to have developet to an analogous shape to that of a bee.

tim