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Hi all,

Here I am again asking yet another question about a very common fly that I can't seem to get my layman's head around. I encountered this Tachina (I suppose/hope) in the south-western France (Charantes Maritime - Cognac area) july 5th of this year.

My general-purpose insect guides only list Tachina fera and for a moment I thought I'd found a name for the critter, but a subsequent internet search quickly destroyed that illusion and showed that it might very well also be T. magnicornis (or even some other?).

The info I've found on distinguishing between these species is not very clear and various sources seem to have differing thoughts on the matter.

What I've come up with so far is that the shape of he black dorsal band and he colour of the frontal tarsi could be tell-tale:

T. fera: Band straightish, not forming clear "diamond" shapes and narrowing into a point toward the tale/5th segment. Tarsi yellowish.

T. magnicornis: Band forming diamond shapes and ending wider on the 5th segment, not narrower. Tarsi brownish/dark.

Looking at pictures here and elsewhere on the net that seems to be supported somewhat but not clearly. It also seems to me that he eyes of T. fera generally appear brighter and more reddish and those of T. magnicornis darker/brownish, but that's probably just my untrained eyes wanting to see differences ;)

Anyway, based on that I would now probably choose magnicornis over fera but with "the internet" being he iffy source it is added to my nincompoop fly-recognition capabilities it wouldn't surprise me one bit if it turned out to be a bumblebee after all :o

As I figured it to be a real beginners issue I asked the same question with more possibly helpful images here on insektenfotos.de, but was kindly redirected to diptera.info as it seems to be not quite as trivial as I'd thought.

So, can these species (or even others/more) be distinguished at all by merely looking at (my) pictures and if so, what should one look for (or: Is my internet summary somewhat accurate or total baloney?).

Thanks in advance!
Cheers, Arp