A marker of death. One of the green bottle flies (Lucilia species). You have seen this fly. It feeds on dead things. Common and a good cleaner upper if you like your dead things in the woods to be primarily bone. Found on the MAGLEV train yard site on Beltsville Ag Center. Unlike all the other species we have featured, this one will remain if the trainyard is built. Pretty really, if you can disassociate from its preferred food. I think of one of my favorite poems by Emily Dickinson

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –

The Stillness in the Room

Was like the Stillness in the Air –

Between the Heaves of Storm –

The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –

And Breaths were gathering firm

For that last Onset – when the King

Be witnessed – in the Room –

I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away

What portions of me be

Assignable – and then it was

There interposed a Fly –

With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz –

Between the light – and me –

And then the Windows failed – and then

I could not see to see –

- Emily Dickinson

Photo by Elizabeth Panner. New photographer in the lab.

We Are Made One with What We Touch and See

We are resolved into the supreme air,

We are made one with what we touch and see,

With our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair,

With our young lives each spring impassioned tree

Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range

The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.

- Oscar Wilde. Original public domain image from Flickr

Green Metallic Fly face, closeup shot.