Pacific Crest Trail north of summit of Buck's Lake Road., Plumas County, California, USA
July 18, 2011
This is an interesting new genus for me. I keyed it to family in MND
(1) and Cole
(2)...getting to Syrphidae. But I was convinced that I must have made a error...as the large-ish size and overall look somehow struck me as "un-syrphid-like". (Perhaps if I had gotten a good shot of wing venation, and seen a "spurious vein", I would have been persuaded earlier.)
So after following all sorts of alternate (family) key break choices, and exploring many other families for a possible fit...I finally(!) realizied I should just see what happened if I tried to go through a key to genera for Syrphidae. Both MND
(1) and Cole
(2) led to
Brachyopa, and images on BugGuide were a very good match. (At least I learned a bit about a number of other families from my erroneous resistance to the idea that this could be a syrphid :-)
The fly was nectaring on the abundantly flowering
Prunus emarginata.