this thing buzzed past me like a hummingbird and then sat on my raised bed wall for a while. the wood it’s sitting on is roughly 1 inch wide. bug was about 2 inches long. what is?
Mydas fly?
that looks about right, thank you!
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According to Seek, it is a clubbed mydas fly.
Party on Garth
Those are pretty cool. It looks like the adults are nectar feeders and larva predate grubs in dead logs/trees. They tend to be large with the biggest looking like this:
my favorite thing i read about them on wikipedia following the ID was that not only does their coloration mimic a spider hawk wasp, they also reportedly fly around poking things with their harmless butts, presumably so that potential predators are convinced of their waspitude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mydas_clavatus?wprov=sfti1#Biology
