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Photo#269047
Pairs of flies

Pairs of flies
Manzanita Regional Park, Salinas, Monterey County, California, USA
April 8, 2009
Size: 20-25mm
In a small wet grassy meadow in a wooded area were lots of pairs of these flies, flying around low to the grass, often landing on the grass. Sometimes they were aligned, but sometimes the one underneath was crosswise. What's that about?

Images of this individual: tag all ยท unlink

Moved
Moved from Dance Flies.

A Courtship Gift? Or a Predacious Empid?
I haven't seen it in the field, but I've read that male dance flies capture prey and offer it as "gifts" to impress and court females...maybe that's some of what you were seeing. Or maybe the one on top here is in the process of devouring the poor unaligned cross-wise one. You can't see it in this particular image...but empids have long probosci that they stab their prey with.

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