Identifying bugs while in flight

[Alex C. 0]

Is there a way to tell what an insect is while it's in flight? I saw a few new to me bugs today, but they wouldn't land. I had hunches on a few of them but was wondering if there are different flight charcteristics between different types that you can use to identify them

[Steeldrifter 0]

Caddis fly very eratic back&forth and up&down, mayflies are more slow and graceful, stones are easy to spot because of the four wings. Besides that you need to know a bit about them to really tell one species or family from the next, but maybe Mr. Taxon can explain better then I could

[Michigan Trout Guy 0]

If they were mayflies, my guess would be that they were probably BWO's. I think they're right on schedule to start hatching.

[Alex C. 0]

I am pretty sure one was a caddis fly, a lot of stoneflys, a couple water boatmen, and one looked like a "white miller", don't know what bug that imitates, but I don't think it's supposed to be hatching right now Maybe it was the lack of sleep causing me to see stuff

[Alex C. 0]

I guess it could have been a slate wing mahagany dun

[Taxon 0]

Skunked-

 

Steeldrifter did a good job of describing flight behavior of aquatic insects on the wing. With a little experience, it's fairly easy to identify insects to order (mayfly, caddisfly, stonefly, etc.) on the wing. However, unless the lighting conditions are extremely favorable, and they are (sort of) hovering close to you, as mayfly spinners may do after joined a mating swarm, it's very difficult to identify beyond order on the wing, or so it seems to me.

[JasonN 0]

Ditto what Taxon said.

 

It's interesting you should mention water boatmen. I had never read about them flying before, so last year around this time I was really surprised when some of the first insects I saw in the air all season turned out to be boatmen when I caught them. It's neat to watch them land on the water and dive back down.

 

Also, I'd caution against trying to "identify" anything to its common name. There are lots of scientific species for most common names and lots of common names for most species. They really are a joke for the most part, inaccurate and subjective, so you shouldn't sweat it. Some people call just about anything small a BWO, for example.

 

For basic fly selection, knowing the common names doesn't matter much -- just catch one of the critters and find something in your box that kinda looks like it. There's much to be gained from actually identifying them, but there's no substitute for learning the scientific names, because knowing how to tell the actual taxa apart is how you learn to associate the appearance of the insect with its behavior, which is what's really important. The names are just labels.