3:00 snapshot, #288

I came home early yesterday. This is a view in my neighborhood.

More Urban Species: Flesh Fly

Flesh fly, Sarcophaga sp.

There are a surprising number of species of flies associated with urban life. Moist refuse provides nursery space for the adorable babies of houseflies, bottle flies, and others. But the abundance of squirming maggots in fragrant muck is sure to attract predators. Surprisingly, one of these is the larva of the flesh fly.

There are quite a few species of flesh fly, virtually identical in appearance to our eyes: usually a bit bigger than a house fly, with three stripes on the thorax and a checkerboard on the abdomen. Northern climes may have 30 species in the genus Sarcophaga, while there may be hundreds in warmer, wetter places. Long noticed at carcasses and corpses, the fly's scientific name means 'flesh eater,' but in fact their maggots are flesh eater eaters. Still, forensic entomologists can use the appearance of Sarcophaga maggots as an aid to determine time of death.

I should hasten to add, the genus is a diverse one, and in addition to maggot predators, it includes species that develop as parasites on insects, earthworms or slugs, those that are coprophages, and one whose maggots live only on lizard eggs. Flesh flies found indoors are most often seen in the wake of a poison-based rodent control program. Poisoned mice die in the walls of a building whereupon their carcasses are eaten by 'filth fly' maggots, which are preyed on by flesh fly maggots. (Later the skin and fur are eaten by a host of dermestid beetles and clothes moths and other detritivores.) Flesh flies are important predators and decomposers but they are potential carriers of disease, and certainly the appearance of a great many of them in an urban environment shouldn't be ignored. Like many insects we find distasteful, flesh flies may be a sign that something somewhere is quite rotten.
( more photos and more information )

Noticing the year plus random

boy i sure post a lot on weekends

sorry about the post i made that disappeared. it was intended for thequestionclub originally. i appreciate the comments i got before it was deleted, though!

Today I saw tree swallows at ward's pond, and this evening we saw a wild turkey in the riverway.

I did some research about Mattapan for tomorrow's Urban nature walk--which may be completely unattended. It was a Jewish neighborhood up until the 60's, then a group called Boston Bank Urban Renewal Group began providing loans to African Americans to buy homes in the area. By the 70's almost all the Jewish families had moved elsewhere, and today the population is over 90 percent of African and Caribbean descent. Mattapan has the highest concentration of Haitian people anywhere in Massachusetts. The neighborhood has the second least amount of public land per capita, after the south end. Most of the public land is in the Boston Nature Center, where we're walking tomorrow.

I wish weekends were 4 days long.