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Hi Dave

Got your email with photo. I have attached it here for the other readers on the forum :)

It is a Tachina grossa - one of Britain's largest flies and a parasitoid of large moth larvae, usually in woods or heaths. I wouldn't say it is rare but it is local to suitable habitats ... but when it is seen it tends to stand out a bit so people do spot them quite often ;)

Can you give me the usual record information (date, location, grid reference) for this, so we can enter it into the recording scheme database? :)

Chris R.

PS: the photo didn't upload for me either, which probably means something about the encoding defeated the phpFusion software that runs this forum. To get around it I just cropped it a bit in PhotoShop and resaved it and uploaded the new version, which seems to work fine now :)