banner
Line Line
back
Common Stiletto Fly Thereva nobilitata

This family of long bodied and very hairy flies has not been studied very well. At this moment some 3,000 species are know to be around world wide, but probably there are many more. The majority is rather small. The adults often are difficult to find, because they don't show up on flowers like for instance the hover flies do. The adults hunt in a Robber Fly way, the larvae, looking rather like worms, live among dead leaves. They eat everything from rotting plants to other insects and worms. Only a very few species regularly turn up in gardens. Most of these belong to the Thereva genus of beautiful velvet flies. This species is one of those: the Common Stiletto Fly. It even has a beautiful scientific name: Thereva nobilitata. It is a beautiful fly, apparently covered in golden hairs. We only know that it does live in the UK as well as in the Benelux, but we do not know anything about areas and numbers.