Nature on our doorsteps: The Noon Fly

By Rosaleen Dwyer

Ivy is a useful plant because it flowers late in the year. This provides an important source of pollen and nectar for late season insects.

The many visitors to Ivy’s flowers include wasps, late hoverflies, butterflies like the Red Admiral and the Small Tortoiseshell, and a range of different fly species.

One of the more noticeable flies that visit Ivy is the Noon Fly.

This stout fly is about the size of the familiar Bluebottle fly.

The Noon Fly, however, is shiny black in colour, and its wings have orange-brown patches at the points where the wings join its body.

This orange patch also occurs on the fly’s face.

The distinctive Noon Fly is often seeing sunbathing on leaves

Noon Flies can be seen from March until late October in gardens and flowery places.

They are often spotted sunbathing on sunny walls, so the recent mild and bright autumn weather has suited them.

The fly in the attached photograph was seen in a garden in Tallaght.

Noon Flies are harmless to humans.  The adult fly eats only pollen, nectar, and the juice of over-ripe blackberries.

The female lays her eggs in cow-pats, and when these hatch, the carnivorous Noon Fly larva eats the larvae of other flies.

This makes the Noon Fly a very beneficial insect for us, as it controls species that may be more bothersome for us.