March flies exhibit a fairly distinct sexual dimorphism: the males have large compound eyes, and the females have smaller, separated ones, such as in the photo above. Known by some as “lovebugs” — which I believe is particularly true in Florida — their swarming mating aggregations, like a cloud of bugs, can be a nuisance if not outright hazards for drivers.
As photo subjects, they are often cooperative like this lazy lady. That pinkish blur on the bottom third is my finger sneaking into the shot as I manipulated the leaf for a better angle. Some insects are more amenable to this kind of approach than others, for a different reasons, but whatever the case may be, I usually do not like to intrude into the shots. Sometimes though the perfect angle and the perfect grip of the leaf don’t match up, and I end up making a “cameo” in my photographs.
I think your finger is a nice break to the solid green background.
I’m familiar with lovebugs. For years my wife and I used to drive from St. Louis to St. Pete’s Beach, Florida every mid-May. More often than not we would encounter the lovebugs during mating season in southern Georgia or northern Florida. They would be so thick we would have to stop at gas stations and scape them off the windshield with plastic snow scrapers. Because the hot sum pretty much baked them on the windshield they could be pretty hard to remove. I’m not a fan of march flies. :)
Nice road story! I have to say I don’t have the full “lovebugs” experience; the only ones I’ve seen are single specimens like this individual. I saw a mating pair on one occasion but they were in the backyard resting quite inconspicuously, keeping to themselves…well until someone ruined their quiet party with his big camera…