Some folks call them "Mosquito Hawks" or "Daddy Long Legs" or "Skeeter Eaters."
They're not hawks, they're not arachnids, and they don't eat mosquitoes.
They are crane flies, members of the family Tipulidae of the order Diptera (flies).
With the temperatures rising, they're everywhere now, looking for mates. They're landing on your plants, bumping into walls and windows, and getting tangled (and eaten) in spider webs.
"They do not eat mosquitoes," emphazized UC Davis Distinguished Professor Emerita Lynn Kimsey of the Department of Entomology and Nematology and the retired 34-year director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology. "In fact, adult crane flies generally don't eat at all. Their entire brief adult lives are spent searching for mates and laying eggs."
Adults "generally live only a few days," Kimsey says. (Even less when caught in a spider web.)
It is a curious-looking insect, as if it were created by an exhausted committee that missed a 5 o'clock deadline and is in a hurry to go home: elongated, stilt-like legs, slender body, beady eyes, short snout, segmented antennae, and silvery wings marked with interference patterns, which vary among species.
It looks goofy when it flies, somewhat like an improperly folded paper airplane ready to crash.
Their larvae, known commonly as leatherjackets, usually feed on decaying plant matter, but some species feed on living plants, fungi and invertebrates.
Scientists have described more than 15,500 species and more than 500 genera. Charles Paul Alexander (1889-1981), who obtained his doctorate at Cornell University and later became an entomology professor at Massachusetts Agricultural College at Amherst, published descriptions of 10,890 new species and subspecies, and 256 new genera and subgenera over a period of 71 years from 1910–1981. That amounted to approximately one species description a day. He was inducted a fellow of the Entomological Society of America in 1920.
Taxonomist C. P. Alexander probably cringed every time he heard them called "skeeter eaters."
