I was taking a photo of this
Gulf Fritillary
Butterfly caterpillar in J form when I noticed
two gnat like bugs on it.
Here are some close-ups of them. They're a bit dried out.
I stuck it in a cup, and the flies stayed right there on the
caterpillar, although they moved around a bit. I was in a hurry to
leave, so I just put it aside and ignored it for a while. I figured in a
couple of weeks I'd either have a butterfly to release, or a cup of
flies.
I got the cup of flies.
You can see a lot of them got stuck to the tape. I finally opened up the
cup to photograph them today. I counted 81, but I could have missed a
few in the folds of the tape.
I snapped the pictures, hoped there was at least one good photo, and
came to the pc to make this page. Now that I'm sitting here looking at
the close-up images, I think these might be
wasps, and not flies.
Someone who knows for sure, please send me an email, and I'll post your
ID here. Whatever they are, they ate my
caterpillar!
I did catch one
bug that I know is a parasitic wasp. See it
here.