The other day when I was taking photos after a rainstorm, I discovered this little compost fly (Ptecticus trivittatus) on one of the passion fruit flowers. When I first saw it, it was running around from place to place, which is not unusual for many insects. Then it stopped and got very still at the end of this flower stamen. I couldn’t see the whole fly at that point, just the back of it’s abdomen. Over the course of a couple of minutes it very deliberately passed several small spheres that looked like water. At that point I thought it was excreting excess fluid. But then it moved to another place on the same stamen and repeated the behavior. I took this video as it repeated the behavior a third time and I had realized that she wasn’t excreting excess water, but was laying her eggs. It you look at her abdomen you can see that it does look somewhat distended, especially if you compare it to many other images that you see of compost flies. After I finished this video I watched her repeat the sequence twice more before flying off. To me, it seemed like I got an interesting little peek into a bit more intimate part of insect life. Something slightly more unusual than feeding, drinking, flying, crawling, etc.