OUCH, biggest fly I've ever seen and man can he bite.

This weekend I was clearing some tomato beds and felt a tickle on my upper back and then wham.  I thought I'd been stung by a hornet.  It was this guy.

Looks like a Horse Fly.  https://www.insectidentification.org/insect-description.asp?identification=Horse-Fly

Must be she and not a he, reading your link, only the females drink the blood.  Vampire fly.

Scott Foster wrote:Must be she and not a he, reading your link, only the females drink the blood.  Vampire fly.

Wow....that's a monster!  I'm thinking it may be a new hybrid between a horse fly and a botfly:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botfly

She probably didn't get time to lay more than 10 - 20 eggs before you nuked her..... :-)  

Do you have stable flies where you are?  We can put a man on the moon but stable flies re-emerge each year unphased by typical control measures....with annoying and painful consequences.

John Weiland wrote:

Scott Foster wrote:Must be she and not a he, reading your link, only the females drink the blood.  Vampire fly.

Wow....that's a monster!  I'm thinking it may be a new hybrid between a horse fly and a botfly:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botfly

She probably didn't get time to lay more than 10 - 20 eggs before you nuked her..... :-)  

Do you have stable flies where you are?  We can put a man on the moon but stable flies re-emerge each year unphased by typical control measures....with annoying and painful consequences.

 

John,

Yes, she was a mutant bot fly and I'm undergoing the initial transformation as a zombie.  I'm ground zero for the next zombie apocalypse.  :-)

We have an equestrian center and horse boarding on our back lot-line.  We usually have flies really bad but this is the first time I've seen one of these.

I think it may due to the fact that my food forest is starting to take root.  I'm getting some grassy, perennial type areas along edges and I've noticed a big surge in all things bug this year.    With the good comes the bad

It's a horse fly and they are nasty things.  Their bite is worse than deer flies, but not so bad as the biting green flies that populate the northern MA beaches, esp. Plum Island.  I know them well and so did my horses back in the day!

Marci Sudlow wrote:It's a horse fly and they are nasty things.  Their bite is worse than deer flies, but not so bad as the biting green flies that populate the northern MA beaches, esp. Plum Island.  I know them well and so did my horses back in the day!

Marci,

A couple of years ago we were on Ocracoke Island and did a day trip to an outer island.

I'm not sure if they were green flys but these things were swarming and biting so bad we had to get in the water and they would swarm in our hair.  It was a great memory but it sucked at the time.  I've never encountered anything like it, well maybe mosquitos.  Once when a buddy and I did a camping trip without tents in southern Ontario.  Not the brightest move.  

Quite common here in Ohio. Sparrows love them.