this black moth-like is very aggressive!!!

9 years ago

Ever since this Spring arrived, this black moth-like insect has guarded my deck area for this time. I am almost gardening every other day, if not every single day. Every time I am in the deck area, this black moth-like insect would chase me away. It would chase me out of the area about 10 feet away, and it would be satisfied and stopped chasing me.

Since it has always chased me, I could never have a good look of it. I thought that it looked like a strange looking bee or wasp. I could only tell that it was black.

Today, it rested on my window screen. Ah-ha... now I know what it looks like. The following photos are just with different zooms (I've tried the best my camera could do).

What is this insect? Would it bite or sting humans? Thanks

This post was edited by chueh on Mon, Jul 21, 14 at 19:35

Featured Answer

malyjane

9 years ago

that's a tiger bee fly, xenox tigrinus :-)
i have the same problem as well: one just showed up in my garden & seems to literally buzz around me at the most random times.

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Comments (6)

Fori
9 years ago
Fly!

Maybe a biting one, especially if it seemed oddly interested in you. Check out horse flies and deer flies. I suspect it is not a friendly, but maybe it's harmless...
chueh
Original Author
9 years ago
Thanks. It does look like a horse fly now. However, I checked the images of horse flies online, yet none of them has the strange unfly-like heavy black pattern on the wings as that of this one.
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Fori
9 years ago
Can you catch him and freeze him and get a good photo of his top side?
larry_gene
9 years ago
There is enough information there to identify the fly, at least to the family and perhaps genus. Fruit flies tend to have wings with that patterning, and some get quite large, but I'm not sure how large the one in the photos is. If you would measure 20 of your screen grids, that would give an idea of the size. Many fruit flies are house-fly size.
larry_gene
9 years ago
Good call, thanks. I would have never thought to look in the bee flies, the only one out here is very fuzzy.