Bugging You From San Juan Island

This is one of my favorite garden residents (Eudioctria sackeni), or the Sacken Longhorn Robber. I remember the first time I saw one of these, I thought, “Wow, it’s an Ombre Fly!” If you didn’t know, “ombre” means the blending of one particular color hue to another, often from light tints to dark. The coloration in this particular fly is distinctly “ombre,” though it varies in individuals within the species.

Eudioctria flies are in the family group, Asilidae or Robber flies. They are voracious predators of small insects that can be pests of gardens and orchards. Here, you see this one enjoying a small dipteran (fly) of some variety, perched on the leaf of one of my mint plants. The mint is a popular scouting platform. On any given day in the summer, I’ll see 4 or 5 of these flies in a six foot strip of mint which has become quite abundant in the yard over the past few years. The mint seems to be quite attractive to pollinators, and it also provides shelter for other bugs and critters. Our little tree frogs love to sit in the mint too.

Reference and further reading

Species Eudioctria sackeni – Sacken Longhorn Robber. BugGuide. https://bugguide.net/node/view/60617