what do they eat?

William caught a" mosquito eater" this morning and wanted me to document it!

so here we go...

its actually called a crane fly...but Numerous other common names have been applied to it, (many of them more or less regional) including mosquito hawk, skeeter eater, gallinipper, gollywhopper, and jimmy spinner....( i like gollywhopper the best so far)

(and now skeeto tank! lol)

i thought i would make this a learning experience ,
so we decided to find out what it really does eat...
thanks to our good friends at Wikipedia we learn...

Despite their common names, they do not prey on mosquitoes , nor do they bite humans. Adult crane flies feed on nectar or they do not feed at all; once they become adults, most crane fly species live only to mate and die.

we also learned that the "gollywhopper" we caught is a female...
The female abdomen also ends in a pointed ovipositor that may look like a stinger but is in fact completely harmless.
( sigh of relief!)


hope you have learned something new!
even if it was just about a bug!