I prefer to eat crow, grilled.

Cheers,
Don

... I'll see what I can do. What would you need in detail from this animal to help close in on the ID? Seems to be other like this flying around.

Cheers,
Don

Posterior view posted.

I got my ID from images in the Guide. It was the closest approximation I could come to. Per recommendation I posted beast in this section of the guide, seeking confirmation or clarification. If my Dx of beast is wrong, or correct, I would really want to know what species it is, if possible.

It is a handsome animal!

please keep in mind that even leading experts are quite often unable to identify tachinids beyond family from rather nice photographs --you will see plenty of examples here. Norm Woodley has seen every single photo placed there and was unable to provide any ID more specific than 'Tachinidae'. I urge you to review these pages carefully, appreciate the difficulty of the task, and refrain from moving any tachinid photos to the guide based on what you may perceive as similarity. In this particular case the lack thereof was too obvious even to my perfectly civilian eye, but such ID errors may go unnoticed and mislead scores of other users. Maintaining the Guide's integrity should be a primary concern of every user. This site is not a playground. One reckless move may destroy the painstaking work of many people.

... this is my quiet place. I come here to satisfy an inborn curiosity about animals which I/we interact the most in my/our lives. I have identified most of the insects encountered on my back porch or in the back and front yards. What I've posted in BugGuide are to share or to request identification or verification, as in this instance. "Reckless", "mislead", "destroy" - definitely not. You suggest an intent or motive that does not exist in me. I am aware, in fact I know, of the work done by others in the study of life and living things. I've done that.

Your criticism of my perception is spot on. My "civilian eye" is not as perfect yours. I do hope to get to your level one day with these animals.

Meanwhile, I have a little wasp, a sawfly, to try to figure out.

the idea that you did anything wrong intentionally simply didn't cross my mind. i did not question your dedication to BG and love for insects, Don.
however, you are a long-time bugguider, you've been around here longer than me (my acc't is a couple of months younger), and should certainly know that to request identification or verification one should post the image either in ID Request or at the level he is 100% confident about. placing an image into the guide without adequate experience dealing with that specific taxon, esp. a taxon as enormous and tough as this family, is reckless. a glimpse at the family page would reveal that NA fauna contains hundreds of genera, over 3/4 of which are not even in the guide. that info is there for a reason. once the image has made its way to a taxon page, it's a part of what other use to figure out their stuff. isn't that obvious??? your image, on the other hand, was placed at the genus page without a hint of a qualifying remark. the only way such a placement could be warranted is yours being able to rule out any other option, i.e., the ~200 tachinid genera present in your area --which would make you the leading authority on nearctic Tachinidae, bar none.
and i'm all too painfully aware of how fast ID errors proliferate these days over the web, and get perpetuated, while straightening things up on countless websites takes an unaffordable amount of effort. you would not believe all the grave errors i see every day on both institutional and private sites, even those maintained by BG contributors -- simply because people decide to 'match' their bugs to someone else's photos (even those correctly ID'd). the most experienced professionals make mistakes without the benefit of getting the specimen under the 'scope, let alone those of us who haven't spent a lifetime studying this or that group of organisms. i may misidentify one beetle photo out of, say, 50 or 80, and i know my beetles well. however, should i attempt to find a match for a spider or a wasp or a lep in the guide, i would easily be wrong in nine cases out of ten. would anyone consider such a rate acceptable? would a guide built on such frivolous approach have any authority at all? would you be willing to ever use such a resource to identify your own insects?
please imagine the amount of work policing this site, with its hundreds of thousands of photos, to weed out all the 'how-the-heck-did-it-get-there' images. believe me, the editors could use that time much more efficiently improving the pages and helping people to identify their catch.
it is the result, not the intent, that matters.

I appreciate and place high value on your helpful comments and very good suggestions. The result does matter, especially in this era of rapid digital information exchange. I will take heed.

My experiences in identifying the insects in my digital collection give me cause to appreciate even more the work that you and others put into keeping this website lively and accurate.

Ha! Only "~200 tachinid genera present in [my} area". I'll stick to my back yard! ;)

Cheers,
Don