It's not a bird and doesn't look like a lady

Andy Westley — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 09:03:00 GMT

My wife George and daughter Florence spent the day in the garden at Florence's grandparents on Wednesday. It's so nice that we can start to spend a bit more time outside now the weather's picking up. They came home telling me about a creepy crawly they'd never seen before. My in-laws have lived in the house for 30 years and had never seen one before either. We reached for our wildlife book and George described it as "looking a bit like a bee and a bit like a fly". Before long we'd idenitified it as something we'd never heard of, but that is apparently quite common. A beefly. What a great name.

You can just imagine the conversation at Animal Naming HQ when that one turned up.

Animal namer 1: "Hmmm... Bee-like and fly-like."
Animal namer 2: "Flybee or beefly"
Animal namer 1: "Beefly. Done. What's next?"

With such seemingly simple criteria, how did we end up with ladybird, hedgehog and, most worryingly, cockchafer?

Notes on nature : beefly

It's not a bird and doesn't look like a lady