I saw this fly feeding on Cow Parsley and I thought with its black body but vivid lime green narrow bands around its body it would be fairly easy to find out its identify.
How wrong was I ?
A quick look in a couple of insect reference books I use, drew a blank so off I went to try the inter-web. This is when it got really interesting. I had recognised it as a species of Ichneumon, the females of which you might have seen with what look like great long dangerous stings. They are not stingers, they are used to lay their eggs into caterpillars and other bugs which are then eaten alive till the new fly emerges.
In my quest to identify this one I learned several interesting facts. One was that in the UK there are between 2,000 to 3,000 different species of Ichneumon, many very very similar to each other. So similar that to identify them properly you need to catch them and view under a microscope to check certain details on their genitals or other strange bits on their bodies. It would appear that there are about 2 or 3 REAL EXPERTS in the UK for these. There are very few properly identified photographs on-line and one reference book with some photographs appears to have quite a few misnamed ones in it.
There is a list of most of their names though, it's a PDF file and is 162 pages long, but no photographs or diagrams.
So my lime green banded ichneumon fly will remain unidentified.
So ends todays useless public information broadcast.
Actually I find that really interesting! So annoying when you can't positively id something! No inspection of the genitals then?! :-) Love the detail here including that bit of web that he/she should be aware of. fav!
Nice shot and not at all boring info. I'd probably have thought it was a wasp if I'd seen it. So many insects, so much I don't know. The internet can be a great resource but sometimes trying to identify bugs or birds is an exercise in frustration.
