Stiletto-Face, Year Two - _TNY_8656
My mother-in-law's garage is a surefire spot for jumping spiders so I tend to hang out there quite a lot with the camera. One bad part about this though is the presence of horseflies. It can be pretty irritating trying to nail the focus on a 3 mm long spider when you feel a horsefly landing on your neck.
Obviously I try to swat them when I can, but sometimes they land on the garage wall and I just have to take a photo instead - those eyes are just fantastic!
This grey beauty is a female notch-horned-cleg (Haematopota pluvialis), sometimes also known as the common cleg.
It's a horse-fly and like all horse-flies, the females use their sharp mouth parts to cut open a wound (in humans or other mammals) and collect blood which is necessary for them to form their eggs.
The "notched-horned" part of the name stems from the first antennal segment being rather bulbous with a distinct notch in it.
The English word "cleg" has its origin in the Norwegian "klegg" and it is thought that it is one of those words which comes from the viking influence of old.
In Swedish, a horse-fly is known as a "broms" which is a bit confusing at first as that is Swedish for "brake", but it most likely has an onomatopoetical origin in the humming sound these guys (or girls, I suppose) make when flying.
I actually took an extremely similar photo of the same species in the same place last year, compare it to this one here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/51816712178/
Stiletto-Face, Year Two - _TNY_8656
My mother-in-law's garage is a surefire spot for jumping spiders so I tend to hang out there quite a lot with the camera. One bad part about this though is the presence of horseflies. It can be pretty irritating trying to nail the focus on a 3 mm long spider when you feel a horsefly landing on your neck.
Obviously I try to swat them when I can, but sometimes they land on the garage wall and I just have to take a photo instead - those eyes are just fantastic!
This grey beauty is a female notch-horned-cleg (Haematopota pluvialis), sometimes also known as the common cleg.
It's a horse-fly and like all horse-flies, the females use their sharp mouth parts to cut open a wound (in humans or other mammals) and collect blood which is necessary for them to form their eggs.
The "notched-horned" part of the name stems from the first antennal segment being rather bulbous with a distinct notch in it.
The English word "cleg" has its origin in the Norwegian "klegg" and it is thought that it is one of those words which comes from the viking influence of old.
In Swedish, a horse-fly is known as a "broms" which is a bit confusing at first as that is Swedish for "brake", but it most likely has an onomatopoetical origin in the humming sound these guys (or girls, I suppose) make when flying.
I actually took an extremely similar photo of the same species in the same place last year, compare it to this one here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/51816712178/