---

Location: Midwest Sweden (Dalsland)
Date: 2007-JUL-15
Habitat: Garden

Male Tabanus sp, I think.

Edit: Changed subject (Tabanidae (1))

---

Same place and date. Maybe same species (could even be same individual). The light makes the same fly look very different depending on how it shines.

---

The second one once again.

---

Correct, male T. bromius

Great pics, crex

Theo

---

This guy is so clean, not a hair out of place, not even a pollen grain. Looks as though he is unflown - perhaps even recently emerged from the garden.

---

great pics here! congratulations.


But I want to ask one interesting question, I think.

Recently I heard some reports saying that they spotted tabanids licking minerals on the rock! Then I asked if they were eating some lichen? Or other kind of plant on the rock. They told me that the tabanid was really licking the mineral. Is it usual, Theo? This was reported from Australia to me.

---

I don't know.
But in Australia everything is different.

Moreover, you are talking about some Scaptia- which is in Pangoniinae, a totally different ball game

Theo

---

Thanks for the input, boyz! :D

---

The Australian Tabs licking rocks - are they after iron? I have a vague memory of reading somewhere that as well as the sustenance of the protein in a blood meal, female tabanids also need the traces of iron. (But I may be making it up or mixing it up with some other vague memory.)