A March fly clings to a cliff face at Sculptured Beach, Point Reyes. Swarms of them covered the stone wall that morning; in pursuit of warmth perhaps. The air was chill and the wind up. But this did not deter the March flies. They had urgent business to attend to. Spring is mating season and the newly pupated adults seemed anxious to get on with it. This young male, with his bulbous, hairy eyes, is a terrifying and beautiful life-form straight out of science-fiction. But he is not fiction. He is all science. Every component of his anatomy is an evolutionary marvel. And to think that a few hours before this photo was taken he was a soft-bodied, headless, legless worm is nothing short of astonishing. Flies undergo complete metamorphosis. Each stage of its life cycle is marked by a distinctly unique physical appearance from the last. Here, in it's final form, it is ready to perform its raison d'etre - passing on its genes to a new generation of flies. Entomologists call these types of insects holometabolous, where holo = total. Photographed here at 1:1, this fly was about an inch in length. So named for their appearance in Spring, the March Fly doesn't necessarily emerge in that month. It can make its appearance at any time after the thaw. Here, in Northern Marin County, on this fine May morning, the March Flies emerged to little fanfare. They came to this lonely stretch of beach unobserved by all but one. They live and die by the tens of thousands nearly uncelebrated and unloved. Nearly. This March Fly is celebrated. It is immortalized in cyberspace. And it is loved. Like a sunset or an oak tree it is a master work of singular beauty. One great glass eye captures two greater still, though not of glass, composed of thousands smaller. It is by processing many images that the fly perceives what it sees.
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