Moth Fly

 

This morning I noticed two of these little flying insects in the woods beside the large lake in Reading University grounds.  They were tiny: their wing-span was about 7mm.  The black and yellow banding and their hairy bodies suggested to me that they may be bee-mimics, but surely they are too small to fool birds into thinking they might be bees?

At first I assumed these little insects must be moths because of their hairy wings, but I couldn't find anything like them on the UK Moths website.  It was only after quite a bit of Googling that I came across a reference to moth flies, a group of primitive dipteran flies.  Their classification is, as far as I can take it:

• Kingdom Animalia (Animals)
• Phylum Arthropoda (Arthropods)
• Class Insecta (Insects)
• Order Diptera (Flies)
• Suborder Nematocera (Non-Brachycera)
• Infraorder Psychodomorpha
• Family Psychodidae (Moth Flies and Sand Flies)
• Subfamily Psychodinae (Moth Flies)
• Genus: ?
  
• Species: ?
  

A few years ago we had similar little black flies living in the overflow of our bathroom hand-basin.  I didn't take any photos of them but they must have been drain flies which are very similar.  However, they all disappeared when I squirted some bleach down the overflow, and have never reappeared.