Thick-headed fly
Physocephala sp.
Thick-headed fly · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 12 July 2026
A thick-headed fly on a flower in the July border at the Botanic Garden, a wasp mimic rather than a wasp. The long stalked waist and the club at the end of the abdomen put it in Physocephala, the genus most often seen on garden flowers across the East; the species within it is not something this angle settles.
The family is a bee's nightmare. The females attack bees and wasps directly, grabbing one in flight and forcing an egg into its abdomen between the plates of the exoskeleton. The larva then eats its host from the inside, killing it only once fully grown, which makes this a fly most bees have good reason to avoid.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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