Common green colonel
The common green colonel is a small soldier fly with a shiny black back and a pale green or yellow tummy. In life its eyes are purple with stripes and spots. It likes wet places like marshes and river valleys.
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Fun facts
Its tummy can be whitish, yellow or leaf green, with a black stripe down the middle.
At the back of its body it has a small black plate with two little yellow spines.
Its larva grows to about 16 millimetres, which is twice as long as the grown-up fly.
You can meet the grown-ups from the end of April until the start of October.
Most asked questions about Common green colonel
?Is the common green colonel dangerous?
No. It is a small fly that does not bite or sting.
?How big is the common green colonel?
About 6 to 8 millimetres long, smaller than your fingernail.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Oplodontha viridula
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Stratiomyidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Stratiomyidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Oplodontha viridula (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Lukas Jonaitis from Vilnius, Lithuania. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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