Stump Flies

If you look closely at yesterday’s pictures of recently stumped trees in Green-Wood, you’ll see a fly on one of them. Here are a few more. Saturday got to 60 degrees or so, but these photos were taken earlier in the day when it was perhaps 50. There didn’t seem to be much in the air, invertebrate-wise, but the freshly cut tree stumps were absolute magnets to several species of flies.These are all the big ones.Why? Was it the moisture or sap?

Flies in February. How long before such tropical insect-vectored diseases as dengue are in these northern latitudes? Zika, which is the subject to some hysterical reporting, is kids-play in comparison (remember that the connection between zika and microcephaly isn’t yet proven as of this writing).