Dance fly

This is a horror story from my garden! I was walking around enjoying the nice weather and then I noticed some weird looking large flies. After closer inspection it wasn’t just one fly, it was three! Two dance flies were mating and consuming a fly. So I had to document it with my camera and show it to you.
View the photos large to see more details of natures wonders.

Taken with Olympus E500 digital camera on June 24th, 2007. Click image for larger view.

Taken with Olympus E500 digital camera on June 24th, 2007. Click image for larger view.

Dance flies (Empididae) is a family of flies with over 3000 species. This is possibly Empis tesselata.
They are hunters that capture their prey with the sharp snout, as you can see on the pictures. The males swarm in small groups (thats how they got the name) and each male holds a fly. If a female should fly by, the males offer their prey to her. She chooses the best prey and mates with the male while sucking the fly dry.
Check out this picture of a sawfly eating an insect my other macro pictures here.

Information about the picture:
Camera: Olympus E-500 digital single-lens reflex camera
Exposure: 0.006 sec (1/160)
Aperture: f/11
Focal Length: 35 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Olympus Zuiko Digital 35mm F3.5 Macro
Location: Laupstad (Andørja), Troms in northern Norway