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I feel silly for asking--this looks like a really common animal--but I have no idea what its exact name is:



Larger version here: http://safari.zog...SC6409.jpg

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It is a sphaerocerid fly, one of the species usually associated with dung of larger animals (horse, catle, sheep). Probably a species of Coproica but I will check.

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It's really incredible how many flies take a bucket of well-rotted plant material for animal dung

Thanks!

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Well, I think a bucket with rotten plant material with some added water left in the rain is not different from fresh cow pads.

Thoracochaeta zosterae is a sphaerocerid which is particularly known from beaches where the larvae live in rotting see weed. The species is also found inland along rivers, etc., but much scarcer. I found them in a bucket which had a lot of glass tubes with some agar at the bottom in it. I was just waiting for the agar to become soft enough to clean the tubes and I left the bucket outside in the sun. From unknown distance (but the rive Rhine about 5 km away) flies must have located the bucket and deposited eggs.

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Yes, exactly. That's what I was going for. It even smells like a cow pad.

It made my day when I found first one, and then a swarm of Scathophaga stercoraria on the bucket.

http://safari.zog...SC6350.jpg
http://safari.zog...SC6352.jpg

Thanks again for the ID.

And I understand now why the animal looked familiar: I've probably seen quite a lot of them at the seaside when I was younger and we lived there during the summer months.

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Those would have been Coelopidae, the true see weed flies. These are similar in size or slightly bigger than the sphaerocerid fly of which you posted the image. Thoracochaeta are quite small, more like small Drosophilidae (similar to Scaptomyza palida, e.g.).

Paul